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pfjtlogoptjp of Sngerstoll 

ii 

TO PLOW IS TO PRAY 

TO PLANT IS TO PROPHESY 

AND THE HARVEST 

ANSWERS AND FULFILS 



EDITED AND 
ARRANGED BY 

VERE GOLDTHWAITE 




PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY 
SAN FRANCISCO &P NEW YORK 





LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Ocpies Received 

NOV 20 1906 

Copyrieht Entry 

CLASS CU XXc, No, 

COPY B. 






Copyright, 1906, by 
Paul Elder and Company 



Acknowledgment 

Permission to publish this book 
has been obtained from Mr. 
C. P. Farrell of New York, 
Publisher of the Dresden Edi- 
tion of Col. IngersoW s Com- 
plete Works. Copyright, igoo. 



TO 
THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER 
LOMA ARMOUR-GOLDTHWAITE 





PREFACE 

Probably no man or woman of history 
has been so universally misjudged as Robert 
G. IngersolL Those who did not know him 
personally ', — and they were of course the 
greater number ', — believed him a mere, men- 
tal gladiator ^ rudely disturbing the founda- 
tions of established faith, and giving nothing 
better in return. Many, who never heard 
him speaks or read a word of his, thought 
him incapable of giving to the world any 
system of constructive philosophy — some even 
going so far as to question his sincerity. 

This book is published to dispel in some 
measure that belief and is submitted to the 
public with the single hope that it may be 
read without prejudice and criticized with- 
out fear. 

I acknowledge with gratitude much per- 
sonal kindness received from Mr. C. P. 
Farrell and the members of Col. IngersolPs 

family. 

Vere Goldthwaite. 

Boston, Mass., January /, 1906. 







BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR 

Robert Green Ingersoll was born in Dresden, County of 
TateSy New York, on the nth day of August in the year 
1833, and died at " Waist on" Dobb's Ferry-on-Hudson, 
July 21, 1899. 

He was a teacher, a lawyer, a soldier, a statesman, a 
diplomat, an author, a lecturer and an honest man. He was 
an unsuccessful candidate for Congress in i860 ; organized 
the nth Illinois Cavalry in 1862, and went to war as its 
first Colonel; was Attorney-General of Illinois in 1866, 
and declined the post of Minister (now Ambassador) to 
Germany in 18//. During several presidential campaigns 
he was prominently connected with politics, and in 1876 
startled the world with his brilliant eulogy of James G. 
Blaine, in a speech delivered before the Cincinnati Conven- 
tion of that year which nominated Rutherford B. Hayes for 
President of the United States. This speech, says Mr. Justice 
Brewer, in his "Library of the World's Best Orations," 
was probably the most celebrated speech ever made in an 
American convention. 

About the early life of Ingersoll little that could be called 
authentic was ever published up to as late as the year 1888, 
for in that year Col. Ingersoll himself said : "I have never 
given to any one a sketch of my life. According to my idea, a 
life should not be written until it has been lived." (Vol. 
XII, p. 358, Dresden Edition.) This memoir, however, is 
published with the approval of the late Colonel's family and 
can therefore be considered reliable. 

Ingersoll 's father was a Congregational clergyman, but it 
is not true that there was ever any coldness existing between 
him and his gifted son because of their respective theological 
or anti-theological views. On the contrary, their relations 
were of the kindest and most confidential character, and the 
father died in the Colonel 's arms, won over to many of his 
gifted sons most radical beliefs. 

It is also a mistake to suppose, as many people do, that 
Ingersoll ever denied the existence of a God. On that subject 
he neither denied nor affirmed, he simply said, " / 
do not know." Recent publications, however, still 





Vll 






continue to assert that " Col. IngersoW s notoriety 
has been made by his public lectures denying the 
existence of a God." (Universal Enc, Vol. 6, p. 252.) This 
is not true. What he did deny was the existence of such a 
God as the Jehovah of the Jews. On this subject he has 
written the following : "Let me say once for all, that when 
I speak of God, I mean the being described by Moses : the 
Jehovah of the Jews. There may be for aught I know, some- 
where in the unknown shoreless vast, some Being whose 
dreams are constellations and within whose thought the infi- 
nite exists. About this being, if such an one exists, I have 
nothing to say." (Dresden Edition, Vol. II, p. 136.) 

These misstatements should therefore cease, now that 
Ingersoll is dead, and nothing but the truth should be known 
or written. While he lived he was assailed by the combined 
intellects of the world, but he stood against their assaults like 
a demonstrated truth against the blind, unreasoning super- 
stitions of the past, and now that he is dead, the world 
can well afford to approach and read the eternal message he 
has left. 

He was, without doubt, the greatest orator of the western 
hemisphere. His originality of thought and expression has 
not been excelled by any man of his race or times. He has 
left to us some of the best thought of the world. He was 
himself his only ancestor and he will be his only descendant. 
His work is done and for all time ; he has gone, and for- 
ever; but his memory lives — his words remain. The seeds 
of subtle thought and constructive philosophy which he scat- 
tered with such a lavish hand have taken root in the heart 
and brain of the present generation, and will bear their 
ripened and abundant fruit when t fiat generation has passed 
away. ■'- \ 

In his published works (I mean now, his authorized works) 
there will be found nothing against justice ; not a word 
against truth ; nothing against love, against kindness, pity, or 
affection. If this could be said of all the literature of man- 
kind, we would have what the world has never possessed — 
"A generation of absolutely free men and free women." 

Vere Goldthwaite. 
Boston, Mass., January 1, ipo6. 




Fill 





CONTENTS 




Page 



Preface ------ v 

Biographical Memoir - vii 

Ingersoll's Creed - - - xi 

Fragments - - - - - i 

Life -------24 

Cause and Effect - 29 

Nature - - - - - - 3 2 

Man and Woman - 36 

Marriage ------ 43 

Love --____ 48 

Home - - - - - "5 1 

Children - 54 

Education ------- 58 

Intelligence ----- 63 

Truth - - - - - -65 

Justice ------ 67 

Prejudice ------ 69 

Liberty ------ 70 

Worship - - - - - ~ 7& 

Labor ______ 77 

Science - - - - - -81 

Art ------ 86 

Crime -------93 

War ------ 97 

Spiritualism - - - - - 102 

Optimism - - - - - 103 

Immortality - - - - - 105 

Tributes - - - - 107 

Index - - - - -113 




IX 





"Justice is the only worship. 

Love is the only priest. 

Ignorance is the only slavery. 

Happiness is the only good. 

The time to be happy is now. 

The place to be happy is here. 

The way to be happy is to make 
other people so. 





XI 



JS&i Cfie $fniogopi)p of Sngergoll B&B 



FRAGMENTS 

I believe in the medicine of mirth, and in 
what I might call the longevity of laughter. 
Every man who has caused real, true, honest 
mirth, has been a benefactor of the human race. 

laughter, rose-lipped daughter of Joy, 
there are dimples enough in thy cheeks to catch 
and hold and glorify all the tears of grief ! 

Vice lives either before Love is born, or after 
Love is dead. 

Hope is the only bee that makes honey with- 
out flowers. 

1 shall never attack anything that I believe 
to be good ! I shall never fear to attack anything 
I honestly believe to be wrong! 

It is not enough to say fine things; great 
things, dramatic things, must be done. 

We are standing on the shore of an infinite 
ocean whose countless waves, freighted with 
blessings, are welcoming our adventurous feet. 
Progress has been written on every soul. The 
human race is advancing. 

Kindness is strength. Good nature is often 
mistaken for virtue, and good health sometimes 
passes for genius. Anger blows out the lamp of 
the mind. Candor is the courage of the soul. 



Robinson- 
Crane Dinner. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



Fragments. 



Fragments. 



What Must 
We Do to Be 
Saved? 



On 

Shakespeare. 



Progress. 



The Christian 
Religion. 



W£M CJje MilQZwW *i Sngensoll H&B 



On Abraham 
Lincoln. 



Liberty and 
Literature. 



A Lay Sermon. 



Crimes Against 
Criminals. 



Brooklyn 
Speech. 



The Davis 
Will Case. 



About 

Farming in 

Illinois. 



Centennial 
Oration. 



It is better for Americans to purchase from 
Americans, even if the things purchased cost 
more. 



Let us put wreaths on the brows of the liv- 



ing. 



If nobody has too much, everybody will have 
enough. 

Tenements and flats and rented lands are, in 
my judgment, the enemies of civilization. 
They make the rich richer, and the poor poorer. 
They put a few in palaces, but they put many 
in prisons. 

The gem of the brain is the innocence of 
the soul. 

How beautiful the generosity, the hospi- 
tality of childhood! But as we grow old there 
comes the love of gold, and the love of gold 
seems to have the same effect upon the heart 
that it does upon the country where it is found. 
All the roses fade, the beautiful green trees lose 
their leaves, and there is nothing in the heart 
but sage-brush. And so it is with the land that 
holds within the miserly grip of rocks what we 
call the precious metals. 

It is disgraceful to be idle, and dishonorable 
to be useless. 

Nobody was ever in prison wrongfully who 
did not believe in the writ of habeas corpus. 



B&B ®fie ^fjtlosopjjp of Sngersoll HfiB 



Talent has the four seasons : spring, that is 
to say, the sowing of the seeds; summer, 
growth ; autumn, the harvest ; winter, intellec- 
tual death. But there is now and then a genius 
who has no winter, and, no matter how many 
years he may live, on the blossom of his thought 
no snow falls. Genius has the climate of per- 
petual growth. 

Capital has always claimed and still claims 
the right to combine. Manufacturers meet and 
determine upon prices, even in spite of the great 
law of supply and demand. Have the laborers 
the same right to consult and combine? The 
rich meet in the bank, the club-house, or par- 
lor. Workingmen, when they combine, gather 
in the street. All the organized forces of society 
are against them. Capital has the army and 
the navy, the legislative, the judicial, and the 
executive departments. When the rich com- 
bine, it is for the purpose of " exchanging ideas. " 
When the poor combine, it is " conspiracy. " If 
they act in concert, if they really do something, 
it is a "mob/' If they defend themselves, it is 
"treason. " How is it that the rich control the 
departments of government ? In this country the 
political power is equally divided among the 
men. There are certainly more poor than there 
are rich. Why should the rich control ? 

The clergy know that I know that they 
know that they do not know. 

I do not say, and I do not believe, that Chris- 
tians are as bad as their creeds. 



Fragments. 



Some 

Interrogation 

Points. 



Orthodoxy. 



Heretics and 
Heresies. 



WM Cije ^fjtlosiopfip of SngersioU B&9 



Some 

Interrogation 

Points. 



Death of the 
Aged. 



V 



Fragments. 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 

The Great 
Infidels. 



Vivisection. 



Why should not the laborers combine for 
the purpose of controlling the executive, legis- 
lative, and judicial departments? Will they ever 
find how powerful they are? 

After all, there is something tenderly appro- 
priate in the serene death of the old. Nothing 
is more touching than the death of the young, 
the strong. But when the duties of life have all 
been nobly done; when the sun touches the ho- 
rizon ; when the purple twilight falls upon the 
past, the present, and the future ; when memory, 
with dim eyes, can scarcely spell the blurred and 
faded records of the vanished day, — then, sur- 
rounded by kindred and by friends, death comes 
like a strain of music. The day has been long, 
the road weary, and the traveler gladly stops at 
the welcome inn. 

Nearly forty-eight years ago, under the snow, 
in the little town of Cazenovia, my poor mother 
was buried. I was but two years old. I remem- 
ber her as she looked in death. That sweet, 
cold face has kept my heart warm through all 
the changing years. 

There is no slavery but ignorance. 

"The word of God is the creation which we 
behold." 

When the angel of pity is driven from the 
heart, when the foundation of tears is dry, — 
the soul becomes a serpent crawling in the dust 
of a desert. 



B&i Cf)e Milo*op$V of Ingersoll BSE 



Sleep is the best medicine in the world, 
is the best doctor upon the earth. 



It 



Happiness is the legal tender of the soul. 
Joy is wealth. 

It is not necessary to be great to be happy; 
it is not necessary to be rich to be just and gener- 
ous and to have a heart filled with divine affec- 
tion. No matter whether you are rich or poor, 
treat your wife as though she were a splendid 
flower, and she will fill your life with perfume 
and with joy. 

The road is short to anything we fear. 

Joy lives in the house beyond the one we 
reach. 

Youth has a wish — old age a dread. In 
youth the leaves and buds seem loath to grow. 
Youth shakes the glass to speed the lingering 
sands. Youth says to Time: O crutched and 
limping laggard, get thee wings ! 

The dawn comes slowly, but the westering 
day leaps like a lover to the dusky bosom of the 
Ethiop night. 

Vivisection is the Inquisition — the Hell — 
of Science. All the cruelty which the human 
— or rather the inhuman — heart is capable of 
inflicting, is in this one word. Below this there 
is no depth. This word lies like a coiled serpent 
at the bottom of the abyss. 



About 
Farming in 
Illinois. 



The Liberty of 
Man , Woman 
and Child. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



Random 
Thoughts. 

Random 
Thoughts. 



Random 
Thoughts. 



Random 
Thoughts. 



Vivisection. 



B&E3 Cfje Pjtlosoptjp of inger^oll H&B 



A Word 

About 

Education. 



Some Mistakes 
of Moses. 

On Abraham 
Lincoln. 



Funeral of 

J. G. Mills, 

and 

Immortality. 



Humboldt. 



Humboldt. 



Individuality. 



It is not necessary to have what is called a 
university education in order to be useful or to 
be happy, any more than it is necessary to be 
rich, to be happy. Great wealth is a great burden, 
and to have more than you can use, is to care for 
more than you want. The happiest are those 
who are prosperous, and who by reasonable en- 
deavor can supply their reasonable wants and 
have a little surplus year by year for the winter 
of their lives. 

Only the pure is sacred. 

Logic is the necessary product of intelligence 
and sincerity. 

How would I define public opinion? First, 
in the widest sense, the opinion of the majority, 
including all kinds of people. Second, in a nar- 
row sense, the opinion of the majority of the in- 
tellectual. Third, in actual practice, the opinion 
of those who make the most noise. Fourth, 
public opinion is generally a mistake, which his- 
tory records and posterity repeats. 

Most of the intellectual giants of the world 
have been nursed at the sad and loving breast of 
poverty. 

Wealth and position are generally the ene- 
mies of genius, and the destroyers of talent. 

Society offers continual rewards for self-be- 
trayal, and they are nearly all earned and claimed, 
and some are paid. 



B&I W$t ^i)tIo£iop|)j> of ingersoit BSB 



Happiness is the result of all that is really 
right and sane. 

I would like to see all the politicians changed 
to statesmen, — to men who long to make their 
country great and free, to men who care more 
for public good than private gain — men who 
long to be of use. 

I do not see how it is possible for a man to 
die worth fifty millions of dollars, or ten millions 
of dollars, in a city full of want, when he meets 
almost every day the withered hand of Beggary 
and the white lips of Famine. 

What books would I recommend for the pe- 
rusal of a young man of limited time and cul- 
ture with reference to helping him in the de- 
velopment of intellect and good character ? The 
works of Darwin, Ernst, Haeckel, Draper's 
"Intellectual Development of Europe," Buckle's 
"History of Civilization in England," Lecky's 
"History of European Morals," Voltaire's "Phil- 
osophical Dictionary," Buchner's "Force and 
Matter," Wait's "Liberty of the Christian Reli- 
gion," Paine's "Age of Reason," D'Holbach's 
"System of Nature," and, above all, Shakespeare. 
Do not forget Burns, Shelley, Dickens and Hugo. 

Happiness dwells in the valleys with the 
shadows. 

I had rather be a beggar and spend my last 
dollar like a king, than to be a king and spend 
my money like a beggar. 



Myth and 
Miracle. 



What I Want 
for Christmas. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



Fragments. 



Protection 
for American 
Actors. 



The Liberty of 
Man^ Woman 
and Oii Id. 



S&E Cf)e $fnlo£opf)i> of SngersioU BfiB 



Individuality. 



Individuality. 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



Some Reasons 
Why. 



Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us 
only at the tomb. 

Universal obedience is universal stagnation; 
disobedience is one of the conditions of progress. 

That mankind can be divided into two great 
classes, sinners and saints, is an utter falsehood. 

I regard marriage as the holiest institution 
among men. 

There is only one way to be happy, and that 
is to make somebody else so. 

Standing in the presence of the Unknown, 
all have the same right to think, and all are 
equally interested in the great questions of origin 
and destiny. 

Belief is not a voluntary thing. A man be- 
lieves or disbelieves in spite of himself. They 
tell us that to believe is the safe way ; but I say, 
the safe way is to be honest. Nothing can be 
safer than that. No man in the hour of death 
ever regretted having been honest. No man when 
the shadows of the last day were gathering about 
the pillow of death, ever regretted that he had 
given to his fellow man his honest thought. No 
man, in the presence of eternity, ever wished that 
he had been a hypocrite. No man ever then re- 
gretted that he did not throw away his reason. 
It certainly cannot be necessary to throw away 
your reason to save your soul, because, after that, 
your soul is not worth saving. The soul has a 



H&B W*t $fnlo$opf)s> of f ngersoll B&B 



right to defend itself. My brain is my castle, 
and when I waive the right to defend it, I become 
an intellectual serf and slave. 

The world is beginning to pay homage to 
intellect, to genius, to heart. 

He who endeavors to control the mind by 
force is a tyrant, and he who submits is a slave. 

If we attend to this world instead of another, 
we may in time cover the land with men and 
women of genius. 

Nothing discloses real character like the use 
of power. 

The great poets have sympathized with the 
people. They have uttered in all ages the human 
cry. Unbought by gold, unawed by power, they 
have lifted high the torch that illuminates the 
world. 

To plow is to pray; to plant is to prophesy; 
and the harvest answers and fulfils. 

I believe it is the duty of a lawyer, no mat- 
ter whether prosecuting or defending, to make 
the testimony as clear as he can. If there is any- 
thing contradictory it is his business if he possi- 
bly can to make it clear. If there is any question 
of law about which there is a doubt it is his 
right and it is his duty to give to the court the 
result of his study and of his thoughts for the 
purpose of enlightening the court upon that 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



Some Mistakes 
of Moses. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



On Abraham 

Lincoln. 



Liberty and 
Literature. 



About 
Farming in 

Illinois. 



First 

Star-Route 

Trial. 



Mm Cfje Mite^vW *i Sngetsoll B&B 



How 
to Reform 
Mankind. 



On Abraham 
Lincoln. 

First 

Interview. 



Reply to the 

Indianapolis 

Clergy. 



particular branch of law. No matter if he may 
believe the court understands it, if there is the 
slightest fear that the court does not or has for- 
gotten it, it is his duty to bring the attention of 
the court to that law. It is not his duty to abuse 
anybody. It is not my duty to abuse anybody. 
There is no logic in abuse, not the slightest; and 
when a lawyer, under the pretext of explaining 
the evidence to the jury, calls a defendant a thief 
and a robber, he steps beyond the line of duty 
and, in my judgment, beyond the line of his 
privilege. 

In judging of the rich, two things should be 
considered: how did they get their wealth, and 
what are they doing with it? Was it honestly ac- 
quired? Is it being used for the benefit of man- 
kind? When people become really intelligent, 
when the brain is really developed, no human be- 
ing will give his life to the acquisition of what 
he does not need or what he cannot intelligently 
use. 

After all, men are the best books. 

So far as I am concerned, I think more of 
reasons than of reputations, more of principles 
than of persons, more of nature than of names, 
more of facts than of faiths. 

We do not yet understand the action of the 
brain. No one knows the origin of a thought. 
No one knows how he thinks, or why he thinks, 
any more than one knows why or how his heart 
beats. 



EM Wbt ^f)t(osiop!3|> of SngergoU B&B 



This is a world of progress, a world of per- 
petual change — a succession of coffins and cra- 
dles. When an old religion dies, a better one is 
born. 

I believe, to a certain degree, that every man 
who makes whisky is demoralized. I believe, to 
a certain degree, it demoralizes those who make 
it, those who sell it, and those who drink it. I 
believe from the time it issues from the coiled 
and poisonous worm of the distillery, until it 
empties into the hell of crime, dishonor, and 
death, that it demoralizes everybody that touched 
it. I do not believe anybody can contemplate 
the subject without becoming prejudiced against 
this liquid crime. All we have to do, is to think 
of the wrecks upon either bank of the stream of 
death — of the suicides, of the insanity, of the 
poverty, of the ignorance, of the distress, of the 
little children tugging at the faded dresses of 
weeping and despairing wives, asking for bread; 
of the men of genius it has wrecked; the mil- 
lions struggling with imaginary serpents produced 
by this devilish thing. And when you think of 
the jails, of the almshouses, of the asylums, of 
the prisons, of the scaffolds upon either bank — 
I do not wonder that every thoughtful man is 
prejudiced against the damned stuff called alco- 
hol. 

The disappointed in love, broken in heart — 
the light fading from their lives — seek the refuge 
of death. 

Let us be merciful in our judgments. 



Orthodoxy. 



The Munn 
Trial. 



Is Suicide a 
Sinf 



Is Suicide a 
Sinf 



B&E tEfce ^t)iloSopf)P of Sngersoil B&B 



5wwe Mistakes 
of Moses. 



The Liberty of 

Man , Woman 

and Child. 



What Must 

We Do to Be 

Saved? 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



Some Reasons 
Why. 



About 

Farming in 

Illinois. 

On Voltaire. 



Sixth 
Interview. 



Which Way ? 



A fact will fit every other fact in the uni- 
verse, because it is the product of all other facts. 
A lie will fit nothing except another lie made for 
the express purpose of fitting it. 

I say, let us think. Let each one express his 
thought. Let us become investigators, not fol- 
lowers, not cringers and crawlers. If there is in 
heaven an infinite Being, He never will be satis- 
fied with the worship of cowards and hypocrites. 

Hearts of dust do not break. The dead do 
not weep. 

The man who does not do his own thinking 
is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his 
fellow men. 

Conscience is born of suffering. Mercy is 
the child of the imagination. 

Selfishness is ignorance. 

After all, we do not feel an interest in what 
is to become of our bodies. There is a modesty 
that belongs to death. 

In the world of thought, each man is an ab- 
solute monarch, each brain is a kingdom, that 
cannot be invaded even by the tyranny of ma- 
jorities. 

The self-evident is the square and compass 
of the brain, the polar star in the firmament of 
mind. 



12 



H&B ttye ^i)ilosiopi)j> of SngersioU 141 



I believe the people to be the only rightful 
source of political power, and that any commu- 
nity, no matter where, in which any citizen is 
not allowed to have his voice in the making of 
the laws he must obey, that community is a tyr- 
anny. 

Judges keep their backs to the dawn. They 
find what has been, what is, but not what ought 
to be. They are tied and shackled by precedent, 
fettered by old decisions, and by the desire to be 
consistent, even in mistakes. They pass upon the 
acts and words of others, and, like other people, 
they are liable to make mistakes. 

All officers — including judges — are simply 
their servants, and the sovereign has always the 
right to give his opinion as to the action of his 
agent. The sovereignty of the people is the rock 
upon which rests the right of speech and the 
freedom of the press. 

Words die. Every language has a cemetery. 
Every now and then a word dies and a tombstone 
is erected, and across it is written "obsolete." 

While I cannot tell a man what to do to be- 
come an orator, I can tell him a few things not 
to do. There should be no introduction to an 
oration. The orator should commence with his 
subject. There should be no prelude, no flourish, 
no apology, no explanation. He should say noth- 
ing about himself. Like a sculptor, he stands 
by his block of stone. Every stroke is for a pur- 
pose. As he works the form begins to appear. 



Suffrage 
Address. 



Civil Rights. 



Civil Rights. 



Orthodoxy. 



Hoiv to 
Become an 
Orator. 



13 



ifil Cfje $fnlo*opf)p of Sngersoll H&B 



T^e Tr«^. 



7i Suicide 
a Sin f 



Vivisection. 



Why I Am 

an Agnostic. 

Centennial 
Oration. 



Hoiv 
to Reform 
Mankind. 



The Munn 
Trial. 



When the statue is finished the workman stops. 
Nothing is more difficult than a perfect close. 
Few poems, few pieces of music, few novels end 
well. A good story, a great speech, a perfect 
poem should end just at the proper point. The 
bud, the blossom, the fruit. No delay. A great 
speech is a crystallization in its logic, an efflores- 
cence in its poetry. 

No subject can be too sacred to be under- 
stood. Each person should be allowed to reach 



his own 
thought. 



conclusions and to speak his honest 



Those who attempt suicide should not be pun- 
ished. If they are insane they should, if possi- 
ble, be restored to reason ; if sane, they should 
be reasoned with, calmed and assisted. 

Brain without heart is far more dangerous 
than heart without brain. 

Belief is not subject to the will. 

Every man in the right is my brother. 

Good deeds bear fruit, and in the fruit are 
seeds that in their turn bear fruit and seeds. Great 
thoughts are never lost, and words of kindness 
do not perish from the earth. 

Good character is not made in a day. It is 
the work of a life. The walls of that grand edi- 
fice called a good character have to be worked 
at during life. All the good deeds, all the good 



H 



words, everything right and true and honest that 
he does, goes into this edifice, and it is domed 
and pinnacled with lofty aspirations and grand 
ambitions. It is not made in a day, neither can 
it be crumbled into blackened dust by a word 
from the putrid mouth of a perjurer. 

Without friends and wife and child, there is 
nothing left worth living for. 

Brain without heart is not much ; they must 
act together. 

The greatest statues need the least drapery. 

It is an insanity to get more than you want. 
Imagine a man in this city, an intelligent man, 
say with two or three millions of coats, eight or 
ten millions of hats, vast warehouses full of shoes, 
billions of neckties, and imagine that man get- 
ting up at four o'clock in the morning, in the 
rain and snow and sleet, working like a dog all 
day to get another necktie ! Is not that exactly 
what the man of twenty or thirty millions, or of 
five millions, does today? Wearing his life out 
that somebody may say, " How rich he is ! " 
What can he do with the surplus? Nothing. 
Can he eat it? No. Make friends? No. Pur- 
chase flattery and lies ? Yes. Make all his poor 
relations hate him? Yes. And then, what worry! 
Annoyed, nervous, tormented, until his poor lit- 
tle brain becomes inflamed, and you see in the 
morning paper, "Died of apoplexy" ! This man 
finally began to worry for fear he would not have 
enough neckties to last him through. 



About 
Farming in 

Illinois. 



Liberty and 
Literature, 



On Abraham 

Lincoln. 

A Lay Sermon. 



15 



E&B ®be pfnlcsopf)? of Sngergoll HfiB 



Gladstone. 



The 

Limitations of 

Toleration. 



Christian 

Religion. 



Decoration 
Day Oration. 



First 

Star-Route 

Trial. 



What Must 

We Do to Be 

Siaved? 



If belief depends upon the will, can all men 
have correct opinions who will to have them? 
Honest opinions may be wrong, and opinions dis- 
honestly expressed may be right. 

If you tell your thought at all, tell your hon- 
est thought. Do not be a parrot — do not be an 
instrumentality for an organization. Tell your 
own thought, "honor bright." 

What is right and what is wrong? Every- 
thing is right that tends to the happiness of man- 
kind, and everything is wrong that increases the 
sum of human misery. 

He loves his country best who strives to make 
it best. The bravest men are those who have 
the greatest fear of doing wrong. Mere politi- 
cians wish the country to do something for them. 
True patriots desire to do something for their 
country. Courage without conscience is a wild 
beast. Patriotism without principle is the preju- 
dice of birth, the animal attachment to place. 

The higher you get in the scale of being, 
the grander, the nobler, and the tenderer you 
will become. Kindness is always an evidence of 
greatness. Malice is the property of small souls. 
Whoever allows the feeling of brotherhood to 
die in his heart becomes a wild beast. You know 
it and so do I. 

The honest man, the good woman, the happy 
child, have nothing to fear, either in this world 
or the world to come. 



16 



BfiB Cije ^fnlogopf)? of Hfageraoll H&B 



There is nothing shrewder in this world than 
intelligent honesty. 

Words are the garments of thought, the robes 
of ideas. 

I believe that every article appearing in a 
paper should be signed by the writer. If it is 
libelous, then the writer and the publisher should 
both be held responsible in damages. The law 
on this subject, if changed, should throw greater 
safeguards around the reputation of the citizen. 
It does not seem to me that the papers have any 
right to complain. Probably a good many suits 
are brought that should not be instituted, but 
just think of the suits that are not brought ! 

Thought is the means by which we endeavor 
to arrive at truth. 

I am willing to be on an equality in all hotels, 
in all cars, in all theaters, with colored people. 
I make no distinction of race. Those make the 
distinction who cannot afford not to. If nature 
has made no distinction between me and some 
others, I do not ask the aid of the legislature. 

For the most part we inherit our opinions. 
We are the heirs of habits and mental customs. 
Our beliefs, like the fashion of our garments, de- 
pend on where we were born. We are molded 
and fashioned by our surroundings. 

I would like to see both drunkenness and 
prohibition abolished. 



On Abraham 
Lincoln. 



The Ghosts. 



The Libel 
Laws. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



Civil Rights 
Bill. 



Why I Am 

an Agnostic. 



What I Want 
for Christmas. 



B&E tKije MUteopbV of IngerscU B&l 



Brooklyn 
Speech. 



Some Mistakes 
of Moses. 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



The Gods. 



Myth and 
Miracle. 



The 

Limitations of 

Toleration. 



Humboldt. 



The Gods 



If I should write my last sentence on relig- 
ious topics, what would be my closing? "I now 
in the presence of death affirm and reaffirm the 
truth of all that I have said against the supersti- 
tions of the world." I would say at least that 
much on the subject with my last breath. 

Let me say once for all, that when I speak of 
God, I mean the Being described by Moses : the 
Jehovah of the Jews. There may be, for aught 
I know, somewhere in the unknown shoreless 
vast, some Being whose dreams are constellations 
and within whose thought the infinite exists. 
About this Being, if such an one exists, I have 
nothing to say. 

The ignorant multiply much faster than the 
intellectual. 

Nations, like individuals, have their periods 
of youth, of manhood, and decay. 

Happiness is the true end and aim of life. 

The only possible good in the universe is 
happiness. The time to be happy is now. The 
place to be happy is here. The way to be happy 
is to try and make somebody else so. 

Wisdom is the science of happiness. 

We are looking for the time when the use- 
ful shall be the honorable, and when Reason, 
throned upon the world's brain, shall be the King 
of kings, and God of gods. 



18 



B&I Cije $f)tlogopf)|> of Sngersoll iAi 



Reason is a better guide than fear. 

Reason is the highest attribute of man. 

It is thought by many that it is dangerous for 
thirteen people to dine together. Now, if thir- 
teen is a dangerous number, twenty-six ought to 
be twice as dangerous, and fifty-two four times 
as terrible. 

Overturning the salt is very unlucky, but 
spilling the vinegar makes no difference. Why 
salt should be revengeful and vinegar forgiving 
has never been told. 

Morality is the harmony between act and 
circumstances. It is the melody of conduct. 

Most people imagine that men have always 
talked; that language is as old as the race; and 
it is supposed that some language was taught by 
some mythological god to the first pair. But we 
now know, if we know anything, that language 
is a growth ; that every word had to be created 
by man, and that back of every word is some 
want, some wish, some necessity of the body or 
mind, and also a genius to embody that want or 
that wish, to express that thought to some sound 
that we call a word. 

At first, the probability is, men uttered sounds 
of fear, of content, of anger, or happiness. And 
the probability is that the first sounds or cries ex- 
pressed such feelings, and these sounds were 
nouns, adjectives, and verbs. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 

Some Mistakes 
of Moses. 

Superstition. 



Superstition. 



Art ana 
Morality. 



Language. 



Language. 



l 9 



B&B ®&e $fnlo*opf)$> of HftigersioU H&B 



Language. 



Language. 



Brooklyn 
Speech. 



After a time, man began to give his ideas to 
others by rude pictures, drawings of animals and 
trees and the various other things with which he 
could give rude thoughts. At first he would 
make a picture of the whole animal. Afterwards 
some part of the animal would stand for the 
whole, and in some of the old picture-writings 
the curve of the nostril of a horse stands for the 
animal. This was the shorthand of picture-writ- 
ing. But it was a long journey to where marks 
would stand, not for pictures, but for sounds. And 
then think of the distance still to the alphabet! 
Then to writing, so that marks took entirely the 
place of pictures. Then the invention of mova- 
ble type, and then the press, making it possible 
to save the wealth of the brain; making it pos- 
sible for a man to leave not simply his property 
to his fellow man, not houses and lands and dol- 
lars, but his ideas, his thoughts, his theories, his 
dreams, the poetry and pathos of his soul. Now 
each generation is heir to all the past. 

If we had free thought, then we could col- 
lect the wealth of the intellectual world. In the 
physical world springs make the creeks and 
brooks, and they the rivers, and the rivers empty 
into the great sea. So each brain should add to 
the sum of human knowledge. If we deny free- 
dom of thought, the springs cease to gurgle, the 
rivers to run, and the great ocean of knowledge 
becomes a desert of barren ignorant sand. 

I am going with the Republican Party because 
it is going my way ; but if it ever turns to the 
right or left, I intend to go straight ahead. 



BfiB Cfje $i)tlosiopf)|» of Ingersoli EM 



If I had the power to produce exactly what 
I want for next Christmas, I would have all the 
kings and emperors resign and allow the people 
to govern themselves. 

I would like to see corporal punishment done 
away with in every home, in every school, in 
every asylum, reformatory, and prison. Cruelty 
hardens and degrades, kindness reforms and en- 
nobles. 

I would like to see the millionaires unite and 
form a trust for the public good. 

I would like to see a fair division of profits 
between capital and labor, so that the toiler could 
save enough to mingle a little June with the 
December of his life. 

I would like to see an international court 
established in which to settle disputes between 
nations, so that armies could be disbanded and 
the great navies allowed to rust and rot in per- 
fect peace. 

I would like to see the whole world free — 
free from injustice, free from superstition. 

I would have all the nobility drop their titles 
and give their lands back to the people. I would 
have all the cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests 
and clergymen admit that they know nothing 
about theology, nothing about hell or heaven, 
nothing about the destiny of the human race, 
nothing about devils or ghosts, gods or angels. I 



What I Want 
for Christmas. 



What I Want 
for Christmas. 



What I Want 
for Christmas. 



What I Want 
for Christmas. 



What I Want 
for Christmas. 



What I Want 
for Christmas. 



What I Want 
for Christmas. 



21 



Should 

the Chinese be 

Excluded? 



would have them tell all their "flock" to think 
for themselves, to be manly men and womanlv 
women, and to do all in their power to increase 
the sum of human happiness. 

Chinese laborers are inoffensive, peaceable 
and law-abiding. They are honest, keeping their 
contracts, doing as they agree. They are exceed- 
inglv industrious, alwavs ready to work and 
always giving satisfaction to their employers. 
Thev do not interfere with other people. Thev 
cannot become citizens. Thev have no voice in 
the making or the execution of the laws. Thev 
attend to their own business. They have their 
own ideas, customs, religion and ceremonies — 
about as foolish as our own; but they do not 
try to make converts or to force their dogmas on 
others. They are patient, uncomplaining, stoi- 
cal and philosophical. They earn what they 
can, giving reasonable value for the money which 
they receive, and, as a rule, when they have 
amassed a few thousand dollars, they go back to 
their own country. They do not interfere with 
our ideas, our ways or customs. They are silent 
workers, toiling without any object, except to do 
their work and get their pay. They do not estab- 
lish saloons and run for Congress. Neither do they 
combine for the purpose of governing others. Of 
all the people on our soil they are the least med- 
dlesome. Some of them smoke opium, but the 
opium-smoker does not beat his wife. Some of 
them play games of chance, but they are not mem- 
bers of the Stock Exchange. They eat the bread 
that they earn ; they neither beg nor steal, but 
they are of no use to parties or politicians 



22 



B&B tEfce ^fitlosiopf)? of 3ngersoU HfiB 



except as they become fuel to supply the flame 
of prejudice. They are not citizens and they 
cannot vote. Their employers are about the 
only friends they have. 

The wanderers hope for home. Hope builds 
the house and plants the flowers and fills the air 
with song. 

The sick and suffering hope for health. Hope 
gives them health and paints the roses in their 
cheeks. 

The lonely, the forsaken, hope for love. Hope 
brings the lover to their arms. They feel the 
kisses on their eager lips. 

The poor in tenements and huts, in spite of 
rags and hunger, hope for wealth. Hope fills their 
thin and trembling hands with gold. 

The dying hope that death is but another 
birth, and Love leans above the pallid face and 
whispers: "We shall meet again.' ' 

Hope is the consolation of the world. 

Let us hope that if there be another life it 
will bring peace and joy to all the children of 
men. 

And let us hope that this poor earth on 
which we live may be a perfect world — a world 
without a crime, without a tear. 



The 

Foundations 
of Faith. 



The 

Foundations 
of Faith. 



The 

Foundations 
of Faith. 



The 

Foundations 
of Faith. 



The 

Foundations 
of Faith. 



The 

Foundations 
of Faith. 

The 

Foundations 
of Faith. 



The 

Foundations 
of Faith. 



2 3 



H&H tEfje $inlo£opJ)$> of Sngersoll B&B 



On Z//> 



0» L//e. 



LIFE. 

Born of love and hope, of ecstasy and pain, 
of agony and fear, of tears and joy; dowered 
with the wealth of two united hearts; held in 
happy arms, with lips upon life's drifted font, 
blue-veined and fair, where perfect peace finds 
perfect form ; rocked by willing feet and wooed 
to shadowy shores of sleep by siren mother sing- 
ing soft and low; looking with wonder's wide 
and startled eyes at common things of life and 
day; taught by want and wish and contact 
with the things that touch the dimpled flesh 
of babes ; lured by light and flame, and charmed 
by color's wondrous robes; learning the use of 
hands and feet, and by the love of mimicry 
beguiled to utter speech; releasing prisoned 
thoughts from crabbed and curious marks on 
soiled and tattered leaves; puzzling the brain 
with crooked numbers and their changing, 
tangled worth, — and so through years of alter- 
nating day and night until the captive grows 
familiar with the chains and walls and limita- 
tions of a life. 

And time runs on in sun and shade until the 
one of all the world is wooed and won, and all 
the lore of love is taught and learned again. 
Again a home is built with the fair chamber 
wherein faint dreams, like cool and shadowy 
vales, divide the billowed hours of love. Again 
the miracle of a birth — the pain and joy, the 
kiss of welcome and the cradle-song drowning 
the drowsy prattle of a babe. 



And then the sense of obligation and of °" Li f e - 
wrong : pity for those who toil and weep ; tears 
for the imprisoned and despised; love for the 
generous dead, and in the heart the rapture of a 
high resolve. 

And then Ambition, with its lust of pelf onu/e. 
and place and power, longing to put upon its 
breast distinction's worthless badge. Then keener 
thoughts of men, and eyes that see behind the 
smiling mask of craft — flattered no more by the 
obsequious cringe of gain and greed, knowing 
the uselessness of hoarded gold, of honor bought 
from those who charge the usury of self-respect, 
of power that only bends a coward's knees and 
forces from the lips of Fear the lies of praise. 
Knowing at last the unstudied gesture of esteem, 
the reverent eyes made rich with honest thought, 
and holding high above all other things — high 
as hope's great throbbing star above the dark- 
ness of the dead — the love of wife and child 
and friend. 

Then locks of gray, and growing love of other 0n Li f e ' 
days and half-remembered things; then holding 
withered hands of those who first held his, while 
over dim and loving eyes Death softly presses 
down the lids of rest. 

And so, locking in marriage vows his chil- 0n u f e - 
dren's hands and crossing others on the breasts 
of peace, with daughter's babes upon his knees, 
the white hair mingling with the gold, he jour- 
neys on from day to day to that horizon where 
the dusk is waiting for the night. At last, sitting 



25 



BAB tETfje ^fniogopf)? of ingergoll B&B 



T/&e Christian 
Religion. 



Is Life Worth 
Living ? 



Individuality, 



Reply to the 

Indianapolis 

Clergy. 



About 

Farming in 

Illinois. 



by the holy hearth of home as evening's embers 
change from red to gray, he falls asleep within 
the arms of her he worshiped and adored, feel- 
ing upon his pallid lips Love's last and holiest kiss. 

Life is a shadowy, strange and winding road 
on which we travel for a little way — a few short 
steps, just from the cradle, with its lullaby of 
love, to the low and quiet wayside inn, where all 
at last must sleep, and where the only salutation 
is, Good night. 

I like to be alive, to breathe the air, to look 
at the landscape, the clouds and stars, to repeat 
old poems, to look at pictures and statues, to 
hear music, the voices of the ones I love. I enjoy 
eating and smoking. I like good cold water. I 
like to talk to my wife, my girls, my grandchil- 
dren. I like to sleep and to dream, — yes, life 
to me is worth living. 

Over the vast plain called life, we are all trav- 
elers, and not one traveler is perfectly certain 
that he is going in the right direction. 

After all, of what use is it to search for a 
creator ? The difficulty is not thus solved. You 
leave your creator as much in need of a creator 
as anything your creator is supposed to have 
created. The bottom of your stairs rests on 
nothing, and the top of your stairs leans upon 
nothing. You have reached no solution. 

Have the courage to take life as it comes, 
feast or famine. 



26 



MM Cfje ^inlosopJjp of Sngersoll BAB 



Man must give up searching for the origin 
of anything. No one knows the origin of life, 
or of matter, or of what we call mind. The 
Whence and the Whither are questions that no 
man can answer. In the presence of these ques- 
tions all intellects are upon a level. 

Disguise it as we may, we live in a frightful 
world, with evils, with enemies, on every side. 
From the hedges along the path of life leap the 
bandits that murder and destroy; and every hu- 
man being, no matter how often he escapes, at 
last will fall beneath the assassin's knife. 

To change the figure: We are all passengers 
on the train of life. The tickets give the names 
of the stations where we boarded the car, but 
the destination is unknown. At every station 
some passengers, pallid, breathless, dead, are put 
away, and some with the light of morning in 
their eyes get on. 

To change the figure again : On the wide sea 
of life we are on ships or rafts or spars, and 
some by friendly winds are borne to the fortunate 
isles, and some by storms are wrecked on the 
cruel rocks. And yet upon the isles the same as 
on the rocks, Death waits for all. And Death 
alone can truly say, "All things come to him 
who waits." 

Back of life, of existence, we cannot go ; be- 
yond death we cannot see. All duties, all obli- 
gations, all knowledge, all experience, are for 
this life, for this world. 



Reply to the 
Indianapolis 
Clergy. 



The Children 
of the Stage. 



The Children 
of the Stage. 



The Children 
of the Stage. 



The Truth. 



27 



H&B W$t $JnIosopf)p of 3nger*oU H&B 



ii Suicide a 
Bin? 



The Great 
Infidels. 



On 
Shakespeare. 



The Ghosts. 



Why I Am 

an Agnostic. 



Life is not the same to all — to some a bless- 
ing, to some a curse, to some not much in any- 
way. Some leave it with unspeakable regret, 
some with the keenest joy, and some with in- 
difference. 

With nations as with individuals, the strug- 
gle for life is perpetual, and the law of the sur- 
vival of the fittest applies equally to both. 

When men are prosperous, they are in love 
with life. 

True religion is not a theory — it is practice. 
It is not a creed — it is a life. 

The tree of life grew in India, in China, 
and among the Aztecs, long before the Garden 
of Eden was planted. 



2.% 



EM Cfje $fnio£opfjp of Sngersoll BAB 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 

Every cause must produce an effect, because 
until it does produce an effect, it is not a cause. 
Every effect must in its turn become a cause. 
Therefore, in the nature of things, there cannot 
be a last cause, for the reason that a so-called 
last cause would necessarily produce an effect, 
and that effect must of necessity become a cause. 
The converse of these propositions must be true. 
Every effect must have had a cause, and every 
cause must have been an effect. Therefore, there 
could have been no first cause. A first cause is 
just as impossible as a last effect. 

The consequences of a bad action cannot be 
avoided ; they are the invisible police, the unseen 
avengers, that accept no gifts, that hear no prayers, 
that no cunning can deceive. 

In this world there is neither chance nor 
caprice — neither magic nor miracle. Behind 
every event, every thought and dream, is the 
efficient, the natural and necessary cause. 

Recollect, that for every bad act, there will 
be laid upon your shoulder the arresting hand of 
the consequences ; and it is precisely the same 
with a nation as it is with an individual. You 
have got to pay for all of your mistakes, and 
you have got to pay to the uttermost farthing. 
That is the only forgiveness known in nature. 
Nature never settles unless she can give a receipt 
in full. 



The Gods. 



Myth and 
Miracle. 



Which Way? 



Reunion 
Address. 



2 9 



Ifil Wbt ^f)tIo^opf)j> of 3tagersioil EM 



Is Suicide a 
Sin? 



Is Suicide a 
Sin? 



On Abraham 
Lincoln. 



The Christian 
Religion. 



Our actions are the fruit, the result, of cir- 
cumstances, of conditions, and we do as we must. 
This great truth should fill the heart with pity 
for the failures of our race. 

We should remember that nothing happens 
but the natural. Back of every suicide and every 
attempt to commit suicide is the natural and effi- 
cient cause. Nothing happens by chance. In this 
world the facta touch each other. There is no 
space between — no room for chance. Given a 
certain heart and brain, certain conditions, and 
suicide is the necessary result. If we wish to pre- 
vent suicide we must change conditions. We 
must by education, by invention, by art, by civil- 
ization, add to the value of the average life. We 
must cultivate the brain and heart — do away 
with false pride and false modesty. We must 
become generous enough to help our fellows 
without degrading them. We must make in- 
dustry — useful work of all kinds — honorable. 
We must mingle a little affection with our charity 
— a little fellowship. We should allow those 
who have sinned to really reform. We should 
not think only of what the wicked have done, 
but we should think of what we have wanted to 
do. People do not hate the sick. Why should 
they despise the mentally weak, the diseased in 
brain ? 

The present moment is the child, and the 
necessary child, of all the past. 

If a man puts his hand in the fire and God 
forgives him, his hand will smart exactly the same. 



3° 



H&B W$t SfjUoSopfjp of ittgerSoU H&B 



All mistakes in nature have to be paid for. 
And not only do you pay for your mistake itself, 
but you pay at least ten per cent compound in- 
terest. Whenever you do wrong, and nobody 
finds it out, do not imagine you have gotten over 
it ; you have not. Nature knows it. 

That which has not happened, could not. 
The present is the necessary product of all the 
past, the necessary cause of all the future. In the 
infinite chain there is, and there can be, no broken, 
no missing link. The form and motion of every 
star, the climate of every world, all forms of 
vegetable and animal life, all instinct, intelligence 
and conscience, all assertions and denials, all 
vices and virtues, all thoughts and dreams, all 
hopes and fears, are necessities. Not one of the 
countless things and relations in the universe 
could have been different. 

Consequences determine the quality of an 
action. If consequences are good, so is the action. 
If actions had no consequences, they would be 
neither good nor bad. Man did not get his 
knowledge of the consequences of actions from 
God, but from experience and reason. 



Reunion 
Address. 



What Is 
Religion ? 



The Christian 
Religion. 



HfiB GP&e ^l)tlosiopi)P of Sngersoll BfiB 



M* Goi5. 



Z£e Gw&. 



T^c Go</j. 



T-4* GWj. 



NATURE 

Nature is but an endless series of efficient 
causes. She cannot create, but she eternally 
transforms. There was no beginning, and there 
can be no end. 

A deity outside of Nature exists in nothing, 
and is nothing. Nature embraces with infinite 
arms all matter and all force. That which is be- 
yond her grasp is destitute of both, and can 
hardly be worth the worship and adoration even 
of a man. 

Nature, so far as we can discern, without pas- 
sion and without intention, forms, transforms, and 
retransforms forever. She neither weeps nor 
rejoices. She produces man without purpose, and 
obliterates him without regret. She knows no 
distinction between the beneficial and the hurtful. 
Poison and nutrition, pain and joy, life and death, 
smiles and tears, are alike to her. She is neither 
merciful nor cruel. She cannot be nattered by 
worship nor melted by tears. She does not know 
even the attitude of prayer. She appreciates no 
difference between poison in the fangs of snakes 
and mercy in the hearts of men. Only through 
man does nature take cognizance of the good, 
the true, and the beautiful ; and, so far as we 
know, man is the highest intelligence. 

Beyond nature man cannot go even in thought ; 
above nature he cannot rise ; below nature he 
cannot fall. 



3 2 



HfiB %%t MHo^opW of Inptgoil M&M 



Nature never prompted a loving mother to 
throw her child into the Ganges. 

I will leave my dead where nature leaves 
them. 

Knowledge consists in ascertaining the laws 
of nature. 

In nature I see, or seem to see, good and 
evil, intelligence and ignorance, goodness and 
cruelty, care and carelessness, economy and waste. 
I see means that do not accomplish the ends, de- 
signs that seem to fail. 

Nature cares neither for smiles nor tears, for 
life nor death, the sun shines as gladly on coffins 
as on cradles. 

The universe is all there is, or was, or will 
be. It is both subject and object, contemplator 
and contemplated ; creator and created ; destroyer 
and destroyed ; preserver and preserved, and hath 
within itself all causes, modes, motions, and effects. 

Matter and force were not created. They 
have existed from eternity. They cannot be de- 
stroyed. 

When we abandon the doctrine that some 
infinite being created matter and force, and en- 
acted a code of laws for their government, the 
idea of interference will be lost. The real priest 
will then be, not the mouth-piece of some pre- 
tended deity, but the interpreter of nature. 



Heretics and 
Heresies. 



What Must 
We Do to Be 

Saved f 



On Humboldt. 



Why I Am 

an Agnostic. 



On 

Shakespeare. 



Benedict 
Spinoza. 



Why I Am 

an Agnostic. 



The Gods. 



33 



EM Wat pfnlogopfjp of SngersioU B&i 



Some Reasons 
Why. 



Hew 

to Reform 
Mankind. 



What Is 
Religion f 



Hoiv 
to Reform 
Mankind. 



Reply to the 

Indianapolis 

Clergy. 



In nature there are neither rewards nor 
punishments — there are consequences. 

Nature, generous and heartless, extravagant 
and miserly as she is, is our mother and our only- 
teacher, and she is also the deceiver of men. 

Failure seems to be the trademark of Nature. 
Why? Nature has no design, no intelligence. 
Nature produces without purpose, sustains with- 
out intention and destroys without thought. 
Man has a little intelligence, and he should use 
it. Intelligence is the only lever capable of 
raising mankind. 

Every flower that gives its fragrance to the 
wandering air leaves its influence on the soul of 
man. The wheel and swoop of the winged crea- 
tures of the air suggest the flowing lines of subtle 
art. The roar and murmur of the restless sea, 
the cataract's solemn chant, the thunder's voice, 
the happy babble of the brook, the whispering 
leaves, the thrilling notes of mating birds, the 
sighing winds, taught man to pour his heart in 
song, and gave a voice to grief and hope, to love 
and death. 

How do you account for chemistry ? How do 
you account for the fact that just so many parti- 
cles of one kind seek the society of just so many 
particles of another, and when they meet they 
instantly form a glad and lasting union ? How do 
you know but atoms have love and hatred ? How 
do you know that the vegetable does not enjoy 
growing, and that crystallization itself is not an 



34 



expression of delight ? How do you know that 
a vine bursting into flower does not feel a thrill ? 
We find sex in the meanest weeds, — how can 
you say that they have no love ? 

You know just as well as I that the forces of 
nature produce the good and bad alike. You 
know that the forces of nature destroy the good 
and bad alike. You know that the lightning 
feels the same keen delight in striking to death 
the honest man that it does or would in striking 
the assassin with his knife lifted above the bosom 
of innocence. 



To Henry M. 
Field, D. D. 



Nature invites into this world every babe 
that is born. And what would you think of me, 
for instance, tonight, having invited you here — 
nobody had charged you anything, but you had 
been invited — and when you got here you had 
found one man pretending to occupy one hundred 
seats, another fifty, and another seventy-five, and 
thereupon you were compelled to stand up, — 
what would you think of the invitation ? It seems 
to me that every child of nature is entitled to a 
share of the land, and that he should not be com- 
pelled to beg the privilege to work the soil, of 
a babe that happened to be born beforehand. 



A Lay Sermon. 



35 



B&B &fce ^fjtlosioptP of Sngergoll BAB 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



What Must 

We Do to Be 

Saved? 



Some Mistakes 
of Moses. 



Liberty and 
Literature. 



On Working 
Girls. 



MAN AND WOMAN 

The grandest ambition that any man can 
possibly have, is to so live and so improve him- 
self in heart and brain as to be worthy of the 
love of some splendid woman ; and the grandest 
ambition of any girl is to make herself worthy of 
the love and adoration of some magnificent man. 

In my judgment, the woman is the equal of 
the man. She has all the rights I have, and one 
more, and that is the right to be protected. That 
is my doctrine. 

"Man" and "woman" are the highest titles 
that can be bestowed upon humanity. 

The marriage of the one man to the one 
woman is the citadel and fortress of civilization. 

Nothing can be more marvelous than the 
common and every-day facts of life. The phan- 
toms have been cast aside. Men and women are 
enough for men and women. In their lives is 
all the tragedy and all the comedy that they can 
comprehend. 

I think the women who have been engaged 
in the struggle for equal rights have done good 
for women in the direction of obtaining equal 
wages for equal work. There has also been for 
many years a tendency among women in our 
country to become independent — a desire to 
make their own living, to win their own bread. 



36 



ifii Cf)e ^fnlosopijp of ingergoll B&i 



I think that women should have clubs and 
societies, that they should get together and ex- 
change ideas. Women, as a rule, are provincial 
and conservative. 

It takes a hundred men to make an en- 
campment, but one woman can make a home. 

There has been a great deal said in this 
country of late in regard to giving the right of 
suffrage to women. So far as I am concerned I 
am willing that every woman in the nation who 
desires that privilege and honor shall vote. If 
any woman wants to vote I am too much of a 
gentleman to say she shall not. She gets her 
right if she has it from precisely the same source 
that I get mine, and there are many questions 
upon which I would deem it desirable that 
women should vote, especially upon the question 
of peace or war. If a woman has a child to be 
offered upon the altar of that Moloch, a hus- 
band liable to be drafted, and who loves a heart 
that can be entered by the iron arrow of death, 
she surely has as much right to vote for peace as 
some thrice-besotted sot who reels to the ballot- 
box and deposits a vote for war. I believe, and 
always have, that there is only one objection to 
a woman voting, and that is, the men are not 
sufficiently civilized for her to associate with 
them, and for several years I have been doing 
what little I can to civilize them. 

In every field where woman has become a 
competitor of man she has either become, or 
given evidence that she is to become, his equal. 



37 



Woman and 
Her Domain. 



Woman. 



Suffrage 
Address. 



Woman in 
Politics. 



SfiH tEfje ^f)tlossop{)j> of 3ngersoU HOB 



Woman in 

Politics. 



Interviews. 



Interviews. 



My own opinion is that woman is naturally the 
equal of man, and that in time, that is to say, 
when she has had the opportunity and the train- 
ing, she will produce in the world of art as great 
pictures, as great statutes, and in the world of 
literature as great books, dramas and poems as 
man has produced or will produce. 

A little while ago the literature of the 
world was produced by men, and men were not 
only the writers, but the readers. At that time 
the novels were coarse and vulgar. Now the 
readers of fiction are women, and they demand 
that which they can read, and the result is that 
women have become great writers. The women 
have changed our literature, and the change has 
been good. 

You need not go back four thousand years 
for heroines. The world is filled with them to- 
day. They do not belong to any nation, nor to 
any religion, nor exclusively to any race. Wher- 
ever woman is found, they are found. 

There is no description of any women in 
the Bible that equals thousands and thousands of 
women known today. They will not compare 
with the women born of Shakespeare's brain. 
You will find none like Isabella, in whose spot- 
less life, love and reason blended into perfect 
truth ; nor Juliet, within whose heart passion and 
purity met, like white and red within the bosom 
of a rose ; nor Cordelia, who chose to suffer loss 
rather than show her wealth of love with those 
who gilded dross with golden words in hope of 



33 



EM ®be $f)tlosopf)p of ingersoll EM 



gain ; nor Miranda, who told her love as freely 
as a flower gives its bosom to the kisses of the 
sun ; nor Imogene, who asked : " What is it to 
be false?" nor Hermione, who bore with perfect 
faith and hope the cross of shame, and who at 
last forgave with all her heart ; nor Desdemona, 
her innocence so perfect and her love so pure, 
that she was incapable of suspecting that another 
could suspect, and who with dying words sought 
to hide her lover's crime, and with her last faint 
breath uttered a living lie that burst into a per- 
fumed lily between her pallid lips. 

There is nothing very hard to understand in 
the politics of a country. The general princi- 
ples are for the most part simple. It is only in 
the application that the complexity arises, and 
woman, I think, by nature, is as well fitted to 
understand these things as man. In short, I have 
no prejudice on this subject. At first, women 
will be more conservative than men, and this is 
natural. Women have, through many generations, 
acquired the habit of submission, of acquiescence. 
They have practised what may be called the slave 
virtues — obedience, humility — so that some 
time will be required for them to become accus- 
tomed to the new order of things, to the exercise 
of greater freedom, acting in accordance with 
perceived obligation, independently of authority. 

There is not the slightest danger of women 
becoming too intellectual or knowing too much. 
Neither is there any danger of men knowing too 
much. At least, I know of no men who are in 
immediate peril from that source. I am a firm 



39 



First 

Star-Route 

Trial. 



First 

Star-Route 

Trial. 



Ill €f)e $fnlcsopf)2> of SngetgcU B&B 



First 

Star-Route 

Trial. 



First 

Star-Route 

Trial. 



Trial for 
Blasphemy. 



believer in the equal rights of human beings, and 
no matter what I think as to what woman should 
or should not do, she has the same right to de- 
cide for herself that I have to decide for myself. 
If women wish to vote, if they wish to take 
part in political matters, if they wish to run for 
office, I shall do nothing to interfere with their 
rights. I most cheerfully admit that my politi- 
cal rights are only equal to theirs. 

I think the influence of women is always 
good in politics, as in everything else. I think it 
the duty of every woman to ascertain what she 
can in regard to her country, including its his- 
tory, laws and customs. Woman above all others 
is a teacher. She, above all others, determines 
the character of children — that is to say, of 
men and women. 

There is a painting in the Louvre, a paint- 
ing of desolation, of despair and love. It repre- 
sents the night of the crucifixion. The world 
is represented in shadow. The stars are dead, 
and yet in the darkness is seen a kneeling form. 
It is Mary Magdalene, with loving lips and hands 
pressed against the bleeding feet of Christ. The 
skies were never dark enough nor starless enough ; 
the storm was never fierce enough nor wild 
enough; the quick bolts of heaven were never 
lurid enough, and arrows of slander never flew 
thick enough to drive a noble woman from her 
husband's side. 

A woman whose husband has gone down to 
the gutter, gone down to degradation and filth; 



4 o 



BAB ^f)e ^iloxapf)? of Sttgerssoll BAB 



the woman who follows him and lifts him out 
of the mire and presses him to her noble heart, 
until he becomes a man once more, this woman 
is a worshiper. Her act is worship. 

Miss Anthony is one of the most remarka- 
ble women in the world. She has the enthusiasm 
of youth and spring, the courage and sincerity 
of a martyr. She is as reliable as the attraction 
of gravitation. She is absolutely true to her con- 
victions, intellectually honest, logical, candid and 
infinitely persistent. No human being has done 
more for woman than Miss Anthony. She has 
won the respect and admiration of the best peo- 
ple on the earth. And so I say, Good luck and 
long life to Susan B. Anthony. 

The affection that man has for woman is, 
in my judgment, the holiest and most beautiful 
thing in nature; the affection that woman has 
for man — that affection, that something that we 
call love — has done all there is of value in the 
world. It has civilized mankind, made all the 
poems, painted all the pictures, and composed all 
the music. Take it from the world and we will 
be simply wild beasts — far worse than wild 
beasts, for they have affection for each other and 
for their young. 

The war that is now being waged against 
the forces of evil is as hopeless as the battle of 
the fireflies against the darkness of night. 

There is but one hope — ignorance, poverty 
and vice must stop populating the world. This 



A Little of 
Everything. 



Argument 
in the 
Russell Case. 



What Is 
Religion ? 



What Is 
Religion f 



IHI W$t $tnlosop$)i> of Sngergoli B&l 



Religion ? 



What Is 
Religion ? 



Interviews. 



cannot be done by moral suasion. This cannot 
be done by talk or example. This cannot be 
done by religion or by law, by priest or by hang- 
man., This cannot be done by force, physical or 
moral. 

To accomplish this there is but one way — 
science must make woman the owner, the mis- 
tress of herself. | Science, the only possible savior 
of mankind, must put it in the power of woman 
to decide for herself whether she will or will 
not become a mother. 

This is the solution of the whole question. 
This frees woman. The babes that are then born 
will be welcome. They will be clasped with glad 
hands to happy breasts. They will fill homes 
with light and joy. 

I have infinite respect for the inventors, the 
thinkers, the discoverers, and, above all, for the 
unknown millions who have, without the hope 
of fame, lived and labored for the ones they 
loved. 



42 



BOB Cfje $f)il0^0pi)j» of 3ngersioU BfiB 



MARRIAGE 

Ought divorced people to marry? This de- 
pends upon whether marriage is a crime. If it 
is not a crime, why should any penalty be at- 
tached ? Can any one conceive of any reason why 
a woman obtaining a divorce, without fault on 
her part, should be compelled as a punishment 
to remain forever single? Why should she be 
punished for the dishonesty or brutality of an- 
other ? Why should a man who faithfully kept 
his contract of marriage, and who was deserted 
by an unfaithful wife, be punished for the bene- 
fit of society? Why should he be doomed to 
live without a home? 

There is still another view. We must re- 
member that human passions are the same after 
as before divorce. To prevent marriage is to 
give excuse for vice. 

The real marriage is back of the ceremony, 
and the real divorce is back of the decree. When 
love is dead, when husband and wife abhor each 
other, they are divorced. The decree records in 
a judicial way what has really taken place, just 
as the ceremony of marriage attests a contract 
already made. 

Although marriage is the most important 
and the most sacred contract that human beings 
can make, still when that contract has been vio- 
lated, courts should have the power to declare it 
null and void upon such conditions as may be just. 



43 



Is Divorce 
Wrong? 



Is Divorce 
Wrong ? 



Is Divorce 
Wrong? 



Is Divorce 
Wrong ? 



BAB tEJje ^ilt&opW of Sttgei^oil BAB 



i?e»z£ or 
Reason. 



Rome or 
Reason. 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



The highest ideal of a family is where all 
are equal, where love has superseded authority, 
where each seeks the good of all, and where 
none obey ; where no religion can sunder hearts, 
and with which no church can interfere. 

The real marriage is based on mutual affec- 
tion ; the ceremony is but the outward evidence 
of the inward flame. To this contract there are 
but two parties. The Church is an impudent 
intruder. Marriage is made public to the end 
that the real contract may be known, so that the 
world can see that the parties have been actu- 
ated by the highest and holiest motives that find 
expression in the acts of human beings. The 
man and woman are not joined together by God, 
or by the Church, or by the State. 

I believe in marriage, and I hold in utter 
contempt the opinions of those long-haired men 
and short-haired women who denounce the in- 
stitution of marriage. 

It took millions of years to come from the 
condition of abject slavery up to the condition 
of marriage. Ladies, the ornaments you wear 
upon your persons tonight are but the souvenirs 
of your mothers' bondage. The chains around 
your necks, and the bracelets clasped upon your 
white arms by the thrilled hand of love, have 
been changed by the wand of civilization from 
iron to shining, glittering gold. 

You are married; try and make the woman 
you love happy. Whoever marries simply for 



44 



EM tE&e MiloXop^V oi ingersoll 1&I 



himself will make a mistake ; but whoever loves 
a woman so well that he says, " I will make her 
happy," makes no mistake. And so with the 
woman who says, "I will make him happy." 
There is only one way to be happy, and that is 
to make somebody else so, and you cannot be 
happy by going across lots; you have got to go 
the regular turnpike road. 

If there is any man I detest, it is the man 
who thinks he is the head of the family — the 
man who thinks he is "boss" ! 

Imagine a young man and a young woman 
courting, walking out in the moonlight, and the 
nightingale singing a song of pain and love, as 
though the thorn touched her heart, — imagine 
them stopping there in the moonlight and star- 
light and song, and saying, "Now, here, let us 
settle who is 'boss' ! " I tell you it is an infam- 
ous word and an infamous feeling. I abhor a 
man who is "boss," who is going to govern in 
his family, and when he speaks orders all the 
rest to be still as some mighty idea is about to 
be launched from his mouth. Do you know I 
dislike this man unspeakably? 

I hate above all things a cross man. What 
right has he to murder the sunshine of the day ? 
What right has he to assassinate the glory of 
life? When you go home you ought to go like 
a ray of light, so that it will, even in the night, 
burst out of the doors and windows and illumi- 
nate the darkness. Some men think their mighty 
brains have been in a turmoil; they have been 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



45 



B&B Cfje pfjtlosopl)? of 3ngergoil H&B 



Man, Woman 
and Child. 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



thinking about who will be alderman from the 
fifth ward ; they have been thinking about poli- 
tics; great and mighty questions have been en- 
gaging their minds ; they have bought calico at 
five cents or six cents and want to sell it for 
seven cents. Think of the intellectual strain that 
must have been upon that man! And when he 
gets home everybody else in the house must look 
out for his comfort! A woman who has only 
taken care of five or six children — and one or 
two of them sick — who has been nursing them 
and singing to them, and trying to make one 
yard of cloth do the work of two, — she, of 
course, is fresh and fine and ready to wait upon 
this gentleman — the head of the family — the 
Boss ! 

Do you know another thing? I despise a 
stingy man. 

I have known men who would entrust their 
wives with their hearts and their honor but 
not with their pocketbook — not with a dollar. 
When I see a man of that kind, I always think 
he knows which of these articles is the most 
valuable. Think of making your wife a beggar ! 
Think of her having to ask you every day for a 
dollar or for two dollars, or fifty cents ! " What 
did you do with that dollar I gave you last 
week?" Think of having a wife who is afraid 
of you! What kind of children do you expect 
to have with a beggar and a coward for their 
mother ? Oh, I tell you if you have but a dollar 
in the world, and you have to spend it, spend it 
like a king, — spend it as though it were a dry 



46 



BAB Cije $fnlo£opf)p of 3htgers;oU BAB 



leaf and you the owner of unbounded forests! 
That's the way to spend it ! 

Get the best you can for your family; try 
to look as well as you can yourself. When you 
used to go courting, how elegantly you looked ! 
Ah, your eye was bright, your step was light, 
and you looked like a prince! Do you know 
that it is insufferable egotism in you to suppose 
a woman is going to love you always looking as 
slovenly as you can? Think of it! Any good 
woman on earth will be true to you forever 
when you do your level best. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



47 



B&B €?je ^fnlogopfjp of Ingergoll BAB 



Orthodoxy. 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



What Must 

We Do to Be 

Saved ? 



LOVE 

Love is the only bow on Life's dark cloud. 
It is the Morning and the Evening Star. It shines 
upon the cradle of the babe, and sheds its radi- 
ance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of 
Art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. 
It is the air and light of every heart, builder 
of every home, kindler of every fire on every 
hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. 
It fills the world with melody, for Music is the 
voice of Love. Love is the magician, the en- 
chanter, that changes worthless things to joy, and 
makes right royal kings and queens of common 
clay. It is the perfume of the wondrous flower 
— the heart — and without that sacred passion, 
that divine swoon, we are less than beasts, — but 
with it, earth is heaven and we are gods. 

There is no success in life without love and 
marriage. You had better be the emperor of one 
loving and tender heart, and she empress of 
yours, than to be king of the world. 

The meanest hut with love in it is a palace 
fit for the gods, and a palace without love is a 
den only fit for wild beasts. 

Good nature is the cheapest commodity in 
the world; and love is the only thing that will 
pay ten per cent to both borrower and lender. 

Intelligent Self-love embraces within its 
mighty arms all the human race. 



4 8 



B&H Cfie MilteQPbV of Sngergoll B&B 



Love and Virtue are the same the whole 
world round, and Justice is the same in every 
star. 

The man who has really won the love of one 
good woman in this world, I do not care if he 
dies a beggar, his life has been a success. 

Love is not of any country ; nobility does not 
belong exclusively to any race ; and through all 
the ages, there have been a few great and tender 
souls blossoming in love and pity. 

It is a splendid thing to think that the wo- 
man you really love will never grow old to you. 
Through the wrinkles of time, through the 
mask of years, if you really love her, you will 
always see the face you have loved and won. 
And a woman who really loves a man does not 
see that he grows old ; he is not decrepit to her ; 
he does not tremble ; he is not old ; she always 
sees the same gallant gentleman who won her 
hand and heart. I like to think of it in that 
way — I like to think that love is eternal. And 
to love in that way and then go down the hill 
of life together, and as you go down, hear, per- 
haps, the laughter of grandchildren, while the 
birds of joy and love sing once more in the leaf- 
less branches of the tree of age! 

Man is strength, woman is beauty; man is 
courage, woman is love. When the one man 
loves the one woman and the one woman loves 
the one man, the very angels leave heaven and 
come and sit in that house and sing for joy. 



Some Mistakes 
of Moses. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



49 



HAS ®[)e $|jilos;opf)p of Snger^oU H&B 



Some Mistakes 
of Moses. 

Woman s 
Right to 
Divorce. 



Civilization rests upon the family. 

People should understand that men and 
women are not virtuous by law. They should 
comprehend the fact that law does not create 
virtue — that the law is not the foundation, the 
fountain of love. They should understand that 
love is in the human heart, and that real love is 
virtuous. People who love each other will be 
true to each other. The death of love is the 
commencement of vice. 






5° 



E&i W$t $fnio£opf)p of 3nger£oll H&B 



HOME 

The home where Virtue dwells with Love is 
like a lily with a heart of fire — the fairest flower 
in all the world. 

The holiest temple beneath the stars is a 
home that Love has built. And the holiest altar 
in all the wide world is the fireside around which 
gather father and mother and the sweet babes. 

If in this world there is anything splendid, 
it is a home where all are equals. 

Around the fireside cluster the private and 
the public virtues of our race. 

The home, after all, is the unit of civilization, 
of good government ; and to secure homes for a 
great majority of our citizens, would be to lay 
the foundation of our Government deeper and 
broader and stronger than that of any nation 
that has existed among men. 

Without the family relation there is no life 
worth living. Every good government is made 
up of good families. The unit of good govern- 
ment is the family, and anything that tends to 
destroy the family is perfectly devilish and in- 
famous. 

Nothing is more important to America than 
that the babes of America should be born around 
the firesides of home. 



Some Mistakes 
of Moses. 



What Must 
We Do to Be 

Saved? 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



About 

Farming 

Illinois. 



Crimes Against 
Criminals. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



Hoiv 

to Reform 

Mankind. 



H&B Cfje ^fjtlosfopfjp of Sngergoil B&B 



On Divorce. 



About 

Farming in 

Illinois. 

Hoiv 
to Reform 
Mankind. 



The good home is the unit of good govern- 
ment. The hearthstone is the corner-stone of 
civilization. Society is not interested in the pres- 
ervation of hateful homes. It is not to the in- 
terest of society that good women should be 
enslaved or that they should become mothers by 
husbands whom they hate. 

Homes make patriots. 

I would exempt a homestead of reasonable 
value, say of the value of two or three thousand 
dollars, not only from sale under execution, but 
from sale from taxes of every description, — these 
homes should be absolutely exempt; they should 
belong to the family, so that every mother might 
feel that the roof above her head was hers ; that 
her house was her castle, and that in its posses- 
sion she could not be disturbed, even by the 
nation. Under certain conditions I would allow 
the sale of this homestead, and exempt the pro- 
ceeds of sale for a certain time, during which 
they might be invested in another home; and 
all this could be done to make a nation of house- 
holders, a nation of land-owners, a nation of 
home-builders. I would invoke the same power 
to preserve these homes, and to acquire these 
homes, that I would invoke for acquiring lands 
for building railways. Every State could fix the 
amount of land that could be owned by an in- 
dividual, not liable to be taken from him for the 
purpose of giving a home to another ; and when 
any man owned more acres than the law allowed, 
and another should ask to purchase them, and 
he should refuse, I would have the law so that 



ft&I Zfyt $i)tlo£iopi)|> of ingergoli B&I 



the person wishing the purchase could file a 
petition in court. The Court would appoint 
commissioners, or a jury would be called, to de- 
termine the value of the land the petitioner 
wished for a home, and, upon the amount being 
paid, found by such commissioner, or jury, the 
land should vest absolutely in the petitioner. 

I believe in the fireside. I believe in the 
democracy of home. I believe in the republican- 
ism of the family. I believe in liberty, equality 
and love. 

If upon this earth we ever have a glimpse of 
heaven, it is when we pass a home in winter, at 
night, and through the windows, the curtains 
drawn aside, we see the family about the pleasant 
hearth: the old lady knitting, the cat playing 
with the yarn, the children wishing they had 
as many dolls or dollars or knives or somethings 
as there are sparks going out to join the roaring 
blast; the father reading and smoking, and the 
clouds rising like incense from the altar of do- 
mestic joy. I never passed such a house without 
feeling that I had received a benediction. 

Honor, place, fame, glory, riches — they are 
ashes, smoke, dust, disappointment, unless there 
is somebody in the world you love, somebody 
who loves you; unless there is some place that 
you can call home, some place where you can 
feel the arms of children around your neck, some 
place that is made absolutely sacred by the love 
of others. 



53 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



Ratification 
Speech. 



E&M tEfje $t)tlosiopi)|> of SngergoU H&B 



T,fo Liberty of 

Alan, Woman 

and Child. 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



About 

Farming in 

Illinois. 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



CHILDREN 

The children have the same rights that we 
have, and we ought to treat them as though they 
were human beings. 

I do not believe in the government of the 
lash. If any one of you ever expects to whip 
your children again, I want you to have a pho- 
tograph taken of yourself when you are in the 
act, with your face red with vulgar anger, and 
the face of the little child, with eyes swimming 
in tears and the little chin dimpled with fear, 
like a piece of water struck by a sudden cold 
wind. Have the picture taken. If that little 
child should die, I cannot think of a sweeter 
way to spend an autumn afternoon than to go out 
to the cemetery, when the maples are clad in 
tender gold, and little scarlet runners are coming, 
like poems of regret, from the sad heart of the 
earth, and sit down upon the grave and look at 
that photograph, and think of the flesh, now 
dust, that you beat. 

A blow from a parent leaves a scar on the 
soul. I should feel ashamed to die surrounded by 
children I had whipped. Think of feeling upon 
your dying lips the kiss of a child you had struck ! 

Imagine a man who deals in stocks whipping 
his boy for putting false rumors afloat ! Think 
of a lawyer beating his own flesh and blood for 
evading the truth when he makes half of his 
own living that way! 



54 



Men are oaks, women are vines, children 
are flowers. 

If the poor have to waken their children 
early in the morning it is as easy to wake them 
with a kiss as with a blow. 

When your child commits a wrong, take it in 
your arms ; let it feel your heart beat against its 
heart; let the child know that you really and 
truly and sincerely love it. 

I say to my children : " Go where you will ; 
commit what crime you may ; fall to what depths 
of degradation you may ; you can never commit 
any crime that will shut my door, my arms, or 
my heart to you. As long as I live you shall 
have one sincere friend." 

Call me infidel, call me atheist, call me what 
you will, I intend to so treat my children that 
they can come to my grave and truthfully say: 
"He who sleeps here never gave us a moment 
of pain. From his lips, now dust, never came to 
us an unkind word." 

The highest test of civilization is the treat- 
ment of women and children. By this standard 
America stands first among nations. 

Few people have an adequate idea of the 
sufferings of women and children, of the num- 
ber of wives who tremble when they hear the 
footsteps of a returning husband, of the number 
of children who hide when they hear the voice 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



Is Avarice 
Triumphant ? 



Is Divorce 
Wrong f 



55 



Some Mistakes 
of Moses. 



At a Child's 
Grave. 



At a Child's 
Grave. 



of a father. Few people know the number 
of blows that fall on the flesh of the helpless 
every day, and few know the nights of terror 
passed by mothers who hold babes to their 
breasts. 

If there is anything in this poor world sug- 
gestive of, and standing for, all that is sweet, lov- 
ing and pure, it is a mother holding in her 
thrilled and happy arms her prattling babe. 

My friends, I know how vain it is to gild a 
grief with words, and yet I wish to take from 
every grave its fear. Here in this world, where 
life and death are equal kings, all should be brave 
enough to meet what all the dead have met. 
The future has been filled with fear, stained and 
polluted by the heartless past. From the won- 
drous tree of life the buds and blossoms fall with 
ripened fruit, and in the common bed of earth, 
patriarchs and babes sleep side by side. 

Why should we fear that which will come to 
all that is? We cannot tell, we do not know, 
which is the greater blessing — life or death. 
We cannot say that death is not a good. We do 
not know whether the grave is the end of this 
life, or the door of another, or whether the night 
here is not somewhere else a dawn. Neither 
can we tell which is the more fortunate — the 
child dying in its mother's arms, before its lips 
have learned to form a word, or he who jour- 
neys all the length of life's uneven road, pain- 
fully taking the last slow steps with staff and 
crutch. 



56 



BSI Wfyt ^fjtlogopijp of 3tagersoil EM 



Every cradle asks us "Whence?" and every 
coffin " Whither ?" The poor barbarian, weep- 
ing above his dead, can answer these questions 
just as well as the robed priest of the most au- 
thentic creed. The tearful ignorance of the one 
is as consoling as the learned and unmeaning 
words of the other. No man, standing where the 
horizon of a life has touched a grave, has any 
right to prophesy a future filled with pain and 
tears. 

It may be that death gives us all there is of 
worth to life. If those we press and strain 
within our arms could never die, perhaps love 
would wither from the earth. And I had rather 
live and love where death is king, than have 
eternal life where love is not. Another life is 
naught, unless we know and love again the 
ones who love us here. 

They who stand with breaking hearts around 
this little grave need have no fear. The larger 
and the nobler faith in all that is, and is to be, 
tells us that death, even at its worst, is only per- 
fect rest. We know that through the common 
wants of life — the needs and duties of each 
hour — their grief will lesson day by day, until 
at last this grave will be to them a place of rest 
and peace — almost of joy. There is for them 
this consolation: the dead do not suffer. If 
they live again, their lives will surely be as good 
as ours. We have no fear. We are all children 
of the same mother, and the same fate awaits us 
all. We, too, have our religion, and it is this: 
Help for the Living, Hope for the Dead. 



At a Child's 
Grave. 



At a Child's 
Grave. 



At a Child's 
Grave. 



57 



B&i Cfce $f)ilo£opf)2> of Sngerssoil BOB 



On Working 
Girls. 



How 

to Reform 
Mankind. 



EDUCATION 

The great trouble with the public school is 
that many things are taught that are of no 
immediate use. I believe in manual-training 
schools. I believe in the kindergarten system. 
Every person ought to be taught how to do 
something — ought to be taught the use of their 
hands. They should endeavor to put in palpa- 
ble form the ideas that they gain. Such an 
education gives them a confidence in themselves, 
a confidence in the future — gives them a spirit 
and feeling of independence that they do not 
now have. 

Children should be taught to think, to in- 
vestigate, to rely upon the light of reason, of 
observation and experience ; should be taught 
to use all their senses ; and they should be taught 
only that which in some sense is really useful. 
They should be taught to use tools, to use their 
hands, to embody their thoughts in the con- 
struction of things. Their lives should not be 
wasted in the acquisition of the useless, or of 
the almost useless. Years should not be devoted 
to the acquisition of dead languages, or to the 
study of history which, for the most part, is a 
detailed account of things that never occurred. 
It is useless to fill the mind with dates of great 
battles, with the births and deaths of kings. 
They should be taught the philosophy of history, 
the growth of nations, of philosophies, theories, 
and, above all, of the sciences. They should be 
taught the importance, not only of financial, but 



58 



H&B K1)t ^fjilo^opf)? of Sngergoil B&5 



of mental, honesty ; to be absolutely sincere ; to 
utter their real thoughts, and to give their act- 
ual opinions; and if parents want honest chil- 
dren, they should be honest themselves. It may 
be that hypocrites transmit their failing to their 
offspring. Men and women who pretend to 
agree with the majority, who think one way and 
talk another, can hardly expect their children 
to be absolutely sincere. 

There was an idea in the olden time — and 
it is not yet dead — that whoever was educated 
ought not to work — that he should use his head 
and not his hands. Graduates were ashamed to 
be found engaged in manual labor, in ploughing 
fields, in sowing or in gathering grain. To this 
manly kind of independence they preferred the 
garret and the precarious existence of an unap- 
preciated poet, borrowing their money from 
their friends, and their ideas from the dead. 
The educated regarded the useful as degrading, — 
they were willing to stain their souls to keep 
their hands white. 

The object of all education should be to in- 
crease the usefulness of man — usefulness to him- 
self and others. Every human being should be 
taught that his first duty is to take care of him- 
self, and that to be self-respecting he must be 
self-supporting. To live on the labor of others, 
either by force which enslaves, or by cunning 
which robs, or by borrowing or begging, is 
wholly dishonorable. Every man should be 
taught some useful art. His hands should be edu- 
cated as well as his head. He should be taught 



59 



Crimes Against 
Criminals. 



Crimes Against 
Criminals. 



HfiB ®%z Miloxopbv of Snsersioll B&B 



Hoiv 
to Reform 
Mankind. 



On Abraham 
Lincoln. 



A Word 

About 

Education. 



Our Schools. 



to deal with things as they are — with life as it 
is. This would give a feeling of independence, 
which is the firmest foundation of honor, of 
character. Every man knowing that he is use- 
ful, admires himself. 

Nothing should be taught in any school that 
the teacher does not know. Beliefs, supersti- 
tions, theories, should not be treated like demon- 
strated facts. The child should be taught to in- 
vestigate, not to believe. Too much doubt is 
better than too much credulity. So, children 
should be taught that it is their duty to think 
for themselves, to understand, and, if possible, 
to know. 

For the most part, colleges are places where 
pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed. 

The man who is fitted to take care of him- 
self, in all the conditions in which he may be 
placed, is, in a very important sense, an educated 
man. The savage who understands the habits of 
animals, who is a good hunter and fisher, is a 
man of education, taking into consideration his 
circumstances. The graduate of a university who 
cannot take care of himself — no matter how 
much he may have studied — is not an educated 
man. 

I believe that the common school is the 
bread of life, and all should be commanded to eat 
of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. It would 
have been far better to have expelled those who 
refused to eat. 



60 



ft&I Cfje Ifitiogopfjp of IngetgoU B£& 



It is far cheaper to build schoolhouses than 
prisons, and it is much better to have scholars 
than convicts. 

The kindergarten system should be en- 
couraged, especially for the young; attending 
school is then a pleasure; the children do not 
run away from school, but to school. We should 
educate the children not simply in mind, but 
educate their eyes and hands, and they should 
be taught something that will be of use, that 
will help them to make a living, that will give 
them independence> confidence — that is to say, 
character. 

There is another thing: teachers are poorly 
paid. Only the best should be employed, and 
they should be well paid. Men and women of 
the highest character should have charge of the 
children, because there is a vast deal of educa- 
tion in association, and it is of the utmost impor- 
tance that the children should associate with real 
gentlemen- — that is to say, with real men; with 
real ladies — that is to say, with real women. 

Schoolhouses are the real temples, and 
teachers are the true priests. 

The greatest danger to the Republic is 
ignorance. Intelligence is the foundation of free 
government. 

The cost of the schools is very little, and the 
cost of land — giving the children, as I said be- 
fore, air and light — would amount to nothing. 



Our Schools. 



Our Schools. 



Our Schools. 



Myth and 
Miracle. 



Our Schools 



Our Schools. 



EM Z\)t ^fjtlosiopt)? of 3ngersoll B&3 



About 
Education. 



So the conclusion of the whole matter is, 
that he is educated who knows how to care for 
himself; and that the happy man is the success- 
ful man; and that it is only a burden to have 
more than you want, or to learn those things 
that you cannot use. 






62 






E&i ®fje $fniosopf)i> of 3nger£oll B&i 



INTELLIGENCE 

In nature there are opposing forces. Some of 
the forces work for what man calls good ; some 
for what he calls evil. Back of these forces our 
ancestors put will, intelligence and design. 

Give me the storm and tempest of thought 
and action, rather than the dead calm of ignor- 
ance and faith ! Banish me from Eden when you 
will, but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree 
of knowledge! 

Out on the intellectual sea there is room 
enough for every sail. 

Intelligence must be the savior of this 
world. 

There is in the intellectual world, as in the 
physical, decay and growth, and ever by the grave 
of buried Age stand Youth and Joy. 

Some have contended that everything is spirit; 
others that everything is matter; and, again, 
others have maintained that a part is matter and 
a part is spirit; some that spirit was first and 
matter after; others that matter was first and 
spirit after; and others that matter and spirit 
have existed together. 

But none of these people can by any possi- 
bility tell what matter is, or what spirit is, or 
what the difference is between spirit and matter. 



63 



The Devil. 



The Gods. 



The Liberty of 
Man , Woman 
and Child. 



What Must 
We Do to Be 
Saved? 



On Voltaire. 



Liberty and 
Literature. 



Liberty and 
Literature. 



How 

to Reform 
Mankind. 



Some 

Interrogation 

Points. 



Some 

Interrogation 

Points. 



Few men have intelligence enough, real 
greatness enough, to own a great fortune. As a 
rule, the fortune owns them. Their fortune is 
their master, for whom they work and toil like 
slaves. The man who has a good business and 
who can make a reasonable living and lay aside 
something for the future, who can educate his 
children and can leave enough to keep the wolf 
of want from the door of those he loves, ought 
to be the happiest of men. 

Is man involved in the "general scheme' ' of 
things? Is there no pity, no mercy? Can man 
become intelligent enough to be generous, to be 



just 3 



or does the same law or fact control him 



that controls the animal world? The great oak 
steals the sunlight from the smaller trees. The 
strong animals devour the weak ; everything eats 
something else ; each is at the mercy of beak, or 
claw, or hoof, or tooth, — of hand and club, — 
of brain and greed: inequality, injustice every- 
where. 

The poor horse standing in the street with 
his dray, — overworked, overwhipped, and un- 
derfed, — when he sees other horses groomed to 
mirrors, glittering with gold and silver, scorning 
with proud feet the very earth, probably indul- 
ges in the usual socialistic reflections; and this 
same horse, worn out and old, deserted by his 
master, turned into the dusty road, leans his head 
on the topmost rail, looks at donkeys in a field 
of clover, and feels like a Nihilist. 



6 4 



B&B tTfje ^fnlogopfjp of Sngersoil B&I 



TRUTH 

To love the truth is mental virtue 
lectual purity. This is true manhood. 



intel- 



Every man should be true to himself — true 
to the inward light. Each man, in the labora- 
tory of his own mind, and for himself alone, 
should test the so-called facts — the theories of 
all the world. Truth, in accordance with his rea- 
son, should be his guide and master. 

Beauty is not all there is of poetry. It must 
contain the truth. 

The man who finds a truth lights a torch. 

Truth gives man the greatest power for 
good. Truth is sword and shield. It is the 
sacred light of the soul. 

Truth is the mother of Joy. Truth civil- 
izes, ennobles, and purifies. The grandest ambi- 
tion that can enter the soul is to know the truth. 

In the world of thought, majorities count 
for nothing. Truth has always dwelt with the 
few. 

In every college Truth should be a welcome 
guest. 

He who attempts to ridicule the truth, ridi- 
cules himself. 



65 



The Truth. 



The Truth. 



Liberty and 
Literature. 



The Truth. 



The Truth. 



The Truth. 



Field- Inger soil 
Discussion. 



Myth and 
Miracle. 



On Voltaire. 



H&B Wfyt Pfjtlo^opf)p of Sngergoll BfiB 



T^ Tra^. 



Liberty and 
Literature. 



The Truth. 



The Truth. 



The Ghosts. 



Orthodoxy. 



Progress. 



The Oath 
{Question. 



Truth is the intellectual wealth of the world. 

Around the oak of truth runs the vine of 
beauty. 

The noblest of occupations is to search for 
truth. 

Truth is the foundation, the superstructure, 
and the glittering dome of progress. 

Free thought will give us truth. 

Everything except the demonstrated truth 
is liable to die. 

Truth is neither young nor old, it is neither 
ancient nor modern, but it is the same for all 
times and places and should be sought for with 
ceaseless activity, eagerly acknowledged, loved 
more than life, and abandoned — never. In ac- 
cordance with the idea that labor is the basis of 
all prosperity and happiness, is another idea or 
truth, and that is, that labor in order to make 
the laborer and the world at large happy, must 
be free. That the laborer must be a free man, 
the thinker must be free. 



com- 



The truth, plainly told, naturally 
mends itself to the intelligence. Every fact is a 
genuine link in the infinite chain, and will agree 
perfectly with every other fact. A fact asks to 
be inspected, asks to be understood. It needs no 
oath, no ceremony, no supernatural aid. It is 
independent of all the gods. 



66 



BAB &f)e ^i)tlosiopf)p of 3nger£oii BAB 



JUSTICE 

The rights of all are equal. Justice, poised 
and balanced in eternal calm, will shake from 
the golden scales, in which are weighed the acts 
of men, the very dust of prejudice and caste. 
No race, no color, no previous condition, can 
change the rights of man. 

If this is not now a free Government, if 
citizens cannot now be protected, regardless of 
race or color, if the three sacred amendments 
have been undermined by the Supreme Court, 
we must have another; and if that fails, then 
another; and we must neither stop, nor pause, 
until the Constitution shall become a perfect 
shield for every right, of every human being, 
beneath our flag. 

There is but one blasphemy, and that is in- 
justice. There is but one worship, and that is 
justice ! 

When all men give to all others all the rights 
they claim for themselves, this world will be 
civilized. 

God cannot afford to damn a man in the 
next world who has made a family happy in 
this. 

The schoolhouse is my cathedral. The uni- 
verse is my bible. I believe in that gospel of 
justice, that we must reap what we sow. 



67 



Centennial 
Oration. 



Civil Rights. 



What Must 
We Do to Be 
Saved? 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



Orthodoxy. 



What Must 
We Do to Be 
Saved ? 



B&B Cf)e ^ijtlosiopt)? of ingersioU H&B 



We 

Limitations of 
Toleration. 



Orthodoxy. 



The Munn 
Trial. 



The Munn 
Trial. 



Which Way? 



Give to every other human being every right 
that you claim for yourself. 

Virtue is of no color; kindness, justice and 
love, of no complexion. 

Were it not for sympathy, the idea of justice 
never would have entered the human brain. 
This thing called Sympathy is the mother of 
Justice, and although Justice has been painted 
blind, never has she been represented as heartless. 

There is no more sacred, no more holy, and 
no purer thing than what you and I call sympa- 
thy, and the man who is unsympathetic is not a 
man. The white breast of the lily is filthy as 
compared to the human heart perfumed with 
love and sympathy. 

When the sword of justice becomes a staff 
to support the weak, it bursts into blossom ; and 
the perfume of that flower is the only incense, 
the only offering, the only sacrifice that mercy 
will accept. 



68 



H&B Cfje Ifntosopf)? of Sngersoll E&E 



PREJUDICE 



Prejudice is born of ignorance and malice. 
One of the greatest men of this country said 
prejudice is the spider of the mind. It weaves 
its web over every window and over every crevice 
where light can enter, and then disputes the 
existence of the light that it has excluded. That 
is prejudice. Prejudice will give the lie to all 
the other senses. It will swear the northern star 
out of the sky of truth. You must avoid it. It 
is the womb of injustice, and a man who can- 
not rise above prejudice is not a civilized man ; 
he is simply a barbarian. 



F:'rst 

Star-Route 

Trial. 



6 9 



E&M ®$t ^i)ilogopf)j» of IfngersoU H&H 



Miracle. 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



LIBERTY 

O Liberty, thou art the god of my idolatry ! 
Thou art the only deity that hateth bended 
knees. In thy vast and unwalled temple, beneath 
the roofless dome, star-gemmed and luminous 
with suns, thy worshipers stand erect! They do 
not cringe, or crawl, or bend their foreheads to 
the earth. The dust has never borne the im- 
press of their lips. Upon thy altars mothers do 
not sacrifice their babes, no men their rights. 
Thou askest naught from man except the things 
that good men hate — the whip, the chain, the 
dungeon key. Thou hast no popes, no priests, 
who stand between their fellow men and thee. 
Thou carest not for foolish forms, or selfish 
prayers. At thy sacred shrine Hypocrisy does not 
bow, Virtue does not tremble, Superstition's fee- 
ble tapers do not burn, but Reason holds aloft 
her inextinguishable torch whose holy light will 
one day flood the world. 

There has never been upon the earth a 
generation of free men and women. It is not 
yet time to write a creed. Wait until the chains 
are broken — until dungeons are not regarded as 
temples. Wait until solemnity is not mistaken 
for wisdom — until mental cowardice ceases to 
be known as reverence. Wait until the living are 
considered the equals of the dead — until the 
cradle takes precedence of the coffin. Wait un- 
til what we know can be spoken without regard 
to what others may believe. Wait until teachers 
take the place of preachers — until followers 






70 



BfiB Cfje $f)ilos;opJ)p of Sngerstoll H&S 



become investigators. Wait until the world is 
free before you write a creed. In this creed 
there will be but one word: Liberty. 

I swear that while I live I will do what lit- 
tle I can to preserve and to augment the liberties 
of man, woman and child. 

Liberty sustains the same relation to mind 
that space does to matter. 

There is but one excuse for government — 
the preservation of Liberty, to the end that man 
may be happy. 

Liberty is the jewel of the soul. 

If there is anything of value, it is liberty — 
liberty of body, liberty of mind. The liberty of 
body is the reward of labor. Intellectual liberty 
is the air of the soul, the sunshine of the mind, 
and without it the world is a prison, the universe 
a dungeon. 

It was Voltaire who sowed the seeds of 
liberty in the heart and brain of Franklin, of 
Jefferson, and Thomas Paine. 

The Declaration of Independence is nobler 
far than all the utterances from Sinai's cloud and 
flame. 

It is far better to be free, to leave the forts 
and barricades of fear, to stand erect and face 
the future with a smile. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



The Liberty of 
Man, Woman 
and Child. 



Liberty and 
Literature. 



On Abraham 

Lincoln. 

Some Reasons 
Why. 



On Voltaire. 



Myth and 
Miracle. 



What Is 
Religion f 



7* 



Wm Cfje MilombV of ingersoll B&H 



A Lay Sermon. 



Suffrage 
Address. 



A Lay Sermon. 



The Liberty of 

Man, Woman 

and Child. 



This is no country for anarchy, no country 
for communism, no country for the Socialist. 
Why? Because the political power is equally 
divided. What other reason? Speech is free. 
What other? The press is untrammeled. And 
that is all that the right should ever ask: a free 
press, free speech, and the protection of person. 
That is enough. 

No American citizen can be forced to pay a 
dollar in a State or in the district where he lives 
who is not represented and where he has not the 
right to vote. It is all tyranny, and all infamous. 

So far as I am concerned, I have made up 
my mind that no organization, secular or relig- 
ious, shall be my master. I have made up my 
mind that no necessity of bread, or roof, or 
raiment shall ever put a padlock on my lips. 
I have made up my mind that no hope of pre- 
ferment, no honor, no wealth, shall ever make 
me for one moment swerve from what I really 
believe, no matter whether it is to my immedi- 
ate interest, as one would think, or not. And 
while I live, I am going to do what little I can 
to help my fellow men who have not been as 
fortunate as I have been. 

I know not what discoveries, what inventions, 
what thoughts, may leap from the brain of the 
world. I know not what garments of glory may 
be woven by the years to come. I cannot dream 
of the victories to be won upon the fields of 
thought ; but I do know, that coming from the 
infinite sea of the future, there will never touch 



72 



B&B Wfyt MUotoPW of Ingersoil H&B 



this "bank and shoal of time" a richer gift, a 
rarer blessing than liberty for man, for woman 
and for child. 

I am a free man ; I will do my own thinking 
or die. I give a mortgage on my soul to nobody ; 
I give a deed of trust on my soul to nobody; 
no matter whether I think well or I think ill, 
whatever thought I have shall be my thought, 
and shall be a free thought, and I am going to 
give cheerfully, gladly, the same right to thus 
think to every other human being. 

I despise any man who does not own him- 
self. I despise any man who does not possess 
his own spirit. I would rather die a beggar 
covered with rags, with my soul erect, fearless 
and free, than to live a king in a palace of gold, 
clothed with the purple of power, with my soul 
slimy with hypocrisy, crawling in the dust of 
fear. I will do my own thinking, and when I 
get it thought, will say it. 

I belong to the republic of intellectual liberty, 
and only those are good citizens of that republic 
who depend upon reason and upon persuasion, 
and only those are traitors who resort to brute 
force. 

The right to do right is my definition of 
physical liberty. " The right of one human be- 
ing ends where the right of another begins." 
My definition of intellectual liberty is, the right 
to think, whether you think right or wrong, 
provided you do your best to think right. 



New York 
Speech. 



New York 
Speech. 



What Must 
We Do to Be 
Sa-ved? 



My Reviewers 
Reviewed. 



73 



M£M ®f)e $f)tlo£opf)2> of ingersioU BAB 



0« Voltaire. 



Progress. 



Centennial 
Oration. 



Centennial 
Oration. 



There is but one use for law, but one excuse 
for government — the preservation of liberty: 
to give to each man his own, to secure to the 
farmer what he produces from the soil, the 
mechanic what he invents and makes, to the art- 
ist what he creates, to the thinker the right to 
express his thought. Liberty is the breath of 
progress. 

On the first day of January, 1863, the grand- 
est New Year that ever dawned upon this con- 
tinent, in accordance with the will of the heroic 
North, by the sublime act of one whose name 
shall be sacred through all the coming years, the 
justice so long delayed was accomplished, and 
four millions of slaves became chainless. 

I have had the supreme pleasure of seeing a 
man — once a slave — sitting in the seat of his 
former master in the Congress of the United 
States. I have had that pleasure, and when I 
saw it my eyes were filled with tears. I felt 
that we had carried out the Declaration of In- 
dependence — that we had given reality to it, 
and breathed the breath of life into its every 
word. I felt that our flag would float over and 
protect the colored man and his little children, 
standing straight in the sun, just the same as 
though he were white and worth a million. I 
would protect him more, because the rich white 
man could protect himself. 

Liberty : Give to every man the fruit of his 
own labor — the labor of his hands and of his 
brain. 



74 



H&B tKfje $f)tloSopf)j> of 3ngersoll HfiS 



All who stand beneath our banner are free. 
Ours is the only flag that has in reality written 
upon it: Liberty, Fraternity, Equality — the 
three grandest words in all the languages of men. 

Liberty, a word without which all other 
words are vain. 



Centennial 
Oration. 



Heretics anc 
Heresies. 



75 



IAI Ufa MiU&op^V of Sngersoll B&I 



Blasphemy 
Trial. 



Blasphemy 
Trial. 



Blasphemy 
Trial. 



Blasphemy 
Trial. 



The 

Limitations of 
Toleration. 



WORSHIP 

Whoever increases the sum of human joy is a 
worshiper. He who adds to the sum of human 
misery is a blasphemer. 

Good, honest, faithful work is worship. The 
man who plows the fields and fells the forests; 
the man who works in mines; the man who 
battles with the winds and waves out on the wide 
sea, controlling the commerce of the. wodd. — 
these men are worshipers. 

The man who sits by the bed of his invalid 
wife, and holds her thin, wan hand in his as 
lovingly, and kisses it as rapturously, as when it 
was dimpled, that man is a worshiper; that is 
real religion. 

The poor man and woman who work night 
and day to educate their children; the parents 
who deny themselves the comforts of life that 
they may lay up something to help their chil- 
dren to a higher place, — they are worshipers. 
And the children, who, after they reap the 
benefit of this worship, become ashamed of their 
parents, are blasphemers. 

Who is a worshiper? One who makes a 
happy home; one who fills the lives of wife 
and children with sunlight ; one who has a heart 
where the flowers of kindness burst into blossom 
and fill the air with perfume. 



7 6 



B&B ®f)e lf)tIogop!)p of 3ngerSoll HfiB 



LABOR 

It is from the surplus produced by labor 
that schools are built, that colleges and univer- 
sities are founded and endowed. From the sur- 
plus the painter is paid for the immortal produc- 
tions of the pencil. This pays the sculptor for 
chiseling the shapeless rock into forms of beauty 
almost divine and the poet for singing the hopes, 
the loves and aspirations of the world. 

This surplus has erected all the palaces and 
temples, all the galleries of art, has given us all 
the books in which we converse, as it were, 
with the dead kings of the human race, and has 
supplied us with all there is of elegance, of 
beauty and of refined happiness in the world. 

We should remember that the prosperity of 
the world depends upon the men who walk in 
the fresh furrows and through the rustling corn, 
upon those whose faces are radiant with the 
glare of furnaces, upon the delvers in dark 
mines, the workers in shops, upon those who 
give to the wintry air the ringing music of the 
axe, and upon those who wrestle with the wild 
waves of the raging sea. 

My hope for the working man has its foun- 
dation in the fact that he is growing more and 
more intelligent. I have also the same hope for 
the capitalist. The time must come when the 
capitalist will clearly and plainly see that his in- 
terests are identical with those of the laboring 



Progress. 



Progress. 



Progress. 



Progress. 



77 



WM Cfje $fjtlo£opf)2> of 3ngersoll H&B 



Eight Hours 

Must Come. 



About 

Farming in 

Illinois. 



Eight Hours 
Must Come. 



Labor 

Question and 

Socialism. 



man. He will finally become intelligent enough 
to know that his prosperity depends on the pros- 
perity of those who labor. When both become 
intelligent the matter will be settled. 

Neither labor nor capital should resort to 
force. 

Nothing can be nobler than to be useful. 
Idleness should not be respectable. 

All my sympathies are on the side of those 
who toil, of those who produce the real wealth 
of the world, of those who carry the burdens of 
mankind. 

I am in sympathy with laboring men of all 
kinds, whether they labor with hand or brain. 
The Knights of Labor, I believe, do not allow 
a lawyer to become a member. I am somewhat 
wider in my sympathies. No men in the world 
struggle more heroically; no men in the world 
have suffered more, or carried a heavier cross, 
or worn a sharper crown of thorns, than those 
who have produced what we call the literature 
of our race. So my sympathies extend all the 
way from hod-carriers to sculptors; from well- 
diggers to astronomers. If the objects of the 
laboring men are to improve their condition 
without injuring others ; to have homes and fire- 
sides, and wives and children ; plenty to eat, good 
clothes to wear ; to develop their minds, to edu- 
cate their children — in short, to become pros- 
perous and civilized, I sympathize with them 
and hope they will succeed. 



78 



Until genius and labor formed a partnership 
there was no such thing as prosperity among 
men. 

Where industry creates and justice protects, 
prosperity dwells. 

There must be something nearer a fairer di- 
vision in this world. You can never get it by 
strikes. Never. The first strike that is a great 
success will be the last, 'because the people who 
believe in law and order will put the strikers 
down. The strike is no remedy. Boycotting is 
no remedy. Brute force is no remedy. These 
questions have to be settled by reason, by candor, 
by intelligence, by kindness ; and nothing is per- 
manently settled in this world that has not jus- 
tice for its corner-stone, and is not protected by 
the profound conviction of the human mind. 

Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers ; 
it is the only prayer that deserves an answer, — 
good, honest, noble work. 

Any man who wishes to force his brother to 
work — to toil — more than eight hours a day is 
not a civilized man. 

I hardly know enough on the subject to give 
an opinion as to the time when eight hours is to 
become a day's work, but I am perfectly satisfied 
that eight hours will become a labor day. 

No man should be allowed to own any land 
that he does not use. 



About 
Farming in 
Illinois. 



About 
Farming in 

Illinois. 



A Lay Sermon. 



Blasphemy 
Trial. 



Eight Hours 
Must Come. 



Eight Hours 
Must Come. 



A Lay Sermon. 



79 



HAB tEuije ^fjtiosoptP of 3ngergoll H&B 






Eight Hours 
Must Come. 



The working people should be protected by 
law; if they are not, the capitalists will require 
just as many hours as human nature can bear. 
We have seen here in America street-car drivers 
working sixteen and seventeen hours a day. It 
was necessary to have a strike in order to get to 
fourteen, another strike to get to twelve, and no- 
body can blame them for keeping on striking 
till they get to eight hours. 

For a man to get up before daylight and 
work till after dark, life is of no particular im- 
portance. He simply earns enough one day to 
prepare himself to work another. His whole life 
is spent in want and toil, and such a life is with- 
out value. 



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SCIENCE 

The glory of science is, that it is freeing the 
soul, breaking the mental manacles, getting the 
brain out of bondage, giving courage to thought, 
filling the world with mercy, justice and joy. 

Science — the only lever capable of raising 
mankind. 

Science is the providence of man, the worker 
of true miracles, of real wonders. 

Science teaches us that there was no creation 
and that there can be no destruction. The infi- 
nite denies creation and defies destruction. An 
infinite person, an "infinite being," is an infinite 
impossibility. To conceive of such a being is 
beyond the power of the mind. 

This century will be called Darwin's century. 
He was one of the greatest men who ever 
touched this globe. He has explained more of 
the phenomena of life than all of the religious 
teachers. 

A belief in the great truths of science are 
fully as essential to salvation as the creed of any 
church. 

Science has read the records of the rocks, — 
records that priestcraft cannot change, — and on 
his wondrous scales has weighed the atom and 
the star. 



81 



Humboldt. 



Humboldt. 



Myth and 
Miracle. 



Myth and 
Miracle. 



Orthodoxy. 



Some Mistakes 
of Moses. 



Myth and 
Miracle. 



ft&I €fje $fnlo$opf)p of ittgetSoU B&I 



/Sozw* Mistakes 
of Moses. 

Interviews. 



Orthodoxy. 



Myth and 
Miracle. 



Myth and 
Miracle. 



Myth and 
Miracle. 



Rome or 
Reason. 



The sciences are not sectarian. 

After all, the man who invented the telescope 
found out more about heaven than the closed 
eyes of prayer had ever discovered. 

Superstition must go. Science will remain. 

Science always has been, is, and always will 
be, modest, thoughtful, truthful. It has but one 
object — the ascertainment of truth. 

Science has founded the only true religion. 
Science is the only redemption of this world. 

Science is for this world, for the use of man. 
It is perfectly candid. It does not try to con- 
ceal, but to reveal. It is the enemy of mystery, 
of pretense and cant. It does not ask people to 
be solemn, but sensible. It calls for and insists 
on the uses of all the senses, of all the faculties 
of the mind. It does not pretend to be "holy" 
or "inspired." It courts investigation, criticism 
and even denial. It asks for the application of 
every test, for trial by every standard. It knows 
nothing of blasphemy and does not ask for the 
imprisonment of those who ignorantly or know- 
ingly deny the truth. The good that springs 
from a knowledge of the truth is the only re- 
ward it offers, and the evil resulting from ignor- 
ance is the only punishment it threatens. Its 
effort is to reform the world through intelligence. 

All have the same interest, whether they 
know it or not, in the establishment of facts. 



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The inventors have helped more than any 
other class to make the world what it is: the 
workers and the thinkers, the poor and the 
grand; Labor and Learning, Industry and In- 
telligence; Watt and Descartes, Fulton and 
Montaigne, Stephenson and Kepler, Crompton 
and Comte, Franklin and Voltaire, Morse and 
Buckle, Draper and Spencer, and hundreds more 
that I could mention. The inventors, the work- 
ers, the thinkers, the mechanics, the surgeons, 
the philosophers, — these are the Atlases upon 
whose shoulders rests the great fabric of modern 
civilization. 

Aristotle said women had more teeth than 
men. This was repeated again and again by the 
Catholic scientists of the eighteenth century. 
Voltaire counted the teeth. The rest were satis- 
fied with "they say." 

Every science rests on the natural, on demon- 
strated facts. Soon morality and religion must 
find their foundations in the necessary nature of 
things. 

Reason, Observation and Experience — the 
Holy Trinity of Science — have taught us that 
happiness is the only good ; that the time to be 
happy is now, and the way to be happy is to 
make others so. This is enough for us. In this 
belief we are content to live and die. If by 
any possibility the existence of a power superior 
to, and independent of, nature shall be demon- 
strated, there will then be time enough to kneel. 
Until then, let us stand erect. 



83 



Progress. 



On Voltaire. 



Hoiv 

to Reform 

Mankind. 



The Gods. 



E&E Cfje ^t)ilo£(opf)j) of Sngersoll ESE 



The Great 
Infidels. 



A 

Thanksgiving 

Sermon. 



The great effort of the human mind is to 
ascertain the order of facts by which we are sur- 
rounded — the history of things. 

It is a long road from the savage to the scien- 
tist; from the den to the mansion; from leaves 
to clothes; from a flickering rush to an arc- 
light; from a hammer of stone to the modern 
mill. A long distance from the pipe of Pan to 
the violin, to the orchestra; from a floating log 
to the steamship; from a sickle to a reaper; 
from a flail to a threshing-machine; from a 
crooked stick to a plow ; from a spinning-wheel 
to a spinning-jenny; from a hand-loom to a 
Jacquard — a Jacquard that weaves fair forms 
and wondrous flowers beyond Arachne's utmost 
dream. From a few hieroglyphics on the skins 
of beasts, on bricks of clay, to a printing-press, 
to a library; a long distance from a messenger, 
traveling on foot, to the electric spark; from 
knives and tools of stone to those of steel ; a long 
distance from sand to telescope; from echo to 
the phonograph — the phonograph that buries 
in indented lines and dots the sounds of living 
speech, and then gives back to life the very 
words and voices of the dead. A long way from 
the trumpet to the telephone — the telephone 
that transports speech as swift as thought and 
drops the words, perfect as minted coins, in lis- 
tening ears ; a long way from a fallen tree to the 
suspension bridge ; from the dried sinews of 
beasts to cables of steel; from the oar to the 
propeller ; from the sling to the rifle ; from the 
catapult to the cannon. A long distance from 
revenge to law ; from the club to the legislature ; 



8 4 



BOB ®i)e ^fulosopi)? of Ingersoll H&B 



from slavery to freedom; from appearance to 
fact; from fear to reason. 

And yet the distance has been traveled by the 
human race. Countless obstructions have been 
overcome, numberless enemies have been con- 
quered, thousands and thousands of victories have 
been won for the right, and millions have lived, 
labored and died for their fellow men. 

For the blessings we enjoy, the happiness 
that is ours, we ought to be grateful. Our hearts 
should blossom with thankfulness. 



A 

Thanksgiving 



A 

Thanksgiving 
Sermon, 



85 



H&B ^ije $fnlo$opJ)|> of Sngerssoll HfiB 



Protection 

for American 

Actors. 



Liberty in 
Literature. 



The Children 
of the Stage. 



The Children 
of the Stage. 



ART 

In old age we are not only willing, but 
anxious, to exchange wealth, and fame, and 
glory, and magnificence, for simplicity. All the 
palaces are nothing compared with our little 
cabin, and all the flowers of the world are 
naught to the wild rose that climbs and blos- 
soms by the lowly window of content. 

Most writers suppress individuality. They 
wish to please the public. They flatter the stu- 
pid and pander to the prejudice of their readers. 
They write for the market-making books as 
other mechanics make shoes; they have no 
message, they bear no torch ; they are simply the 
slaves of customers. 

The stage has taught the noblest lesson, the 
highest truth, and that is this : it is better to de- 
serve without receiving than to receive without 
deserving. 

Children of the stage with fancy's wand 
rebuild the past. The dead are brought to life 
and made to act again the parts they lived. The 
hearts and lips that long ago were dust are made 
to beat and speak again. The dead kings are 
crowned once more, and from the shadows of 
the past emerge the queens, jeweled and scep- 
tered as of yore. Lovers leave their graves and 
breathe again their burning vows ; and again the 
white breasts rise and fall in passion's storm. 
The laughter that died away beneath the touch 



86 



BSfi Ci)e ^fjilo^opfjp of Jngersioll B&O 



of death is heard again, and lips that fell to ashes 
long ago are curved once more with mirth. 
Again the hero bares his breast to death; again 
the patriot falls, and again the scaffold, stained 
with noble blood, becomes a shrine. 

Music may be divided into three kinds: first, 
the music of simple life, without any particular 
emphasis, — and this may be called the music of 
the heels ; second, music in which time is varied, 
in which there is the eager haste and the deli- 
cious delay — that is, the fast and slow, in ac- 
cordance with our feelings, with our emotions, — 
and this may be called the music of the heart; 
third, the music that includes time and emphasis, 
•the hastening and the delay, and something 
in addition, that produces not only states of 
feeling, but states of thought, — this may be 
called the music of the head, the music of the 
brain. 

Wagner is the Shakespeare of Music. 

The funeral march of Siegfried is the 
funeral music of all the dead. Should all the 
gods die, this music would be perfectly appro- 
priate. It is elemental, universal, eternal. 

The love-music in Tristan and Isolde is, like 
that in Romeo and Juliet, an expression of the 
human heart for all time. So the love-duet in 
The Flying Dutchman has in it the consecration, 
the infinite self-denial, of love. The whole heart 
is given; every note has wings, and rises and 
poises like an eagle in the heaven of sound. 



87 



Seidl-Stanton 
Dinner. 



Seidl-Stanton 
Dinner. 

Seidl-Stanton 
Dinner. 



Seidl-Stanton 
Dinner. 



Seidl-Stanton 
Dinner. 



Address to the 

Actors' Fund 

of America. 



Seidl-Stanton 
Dinner. 



The Children 
of the Stage. 



Language is not subtle enough, tender 
enough, to express all that we feel; and when 
language fails, the highest and deepest longings 
are translated into music. Music is the sun- 
shine — the climate — of the soul, and it floods 
the heart with a perfect June. 

The greatest genius of this world has pro- 
duced your literature. I am not now alluding 
simply to one; but there has been more genius 
lavished upon the stage, more real genius, more 
creative talent, than upon any other department 
of human effort. And when men and women be- 
long to a profession that can count Shakespeare in 
its number, they should feel nothing but pride. 

It is probable that I was selected to speak 
about music, because, not knowing one note 
from another, I have no prejudice on the subject. 
All I can say is this: that I know what I like, 
and, to tell the truth, I like every kind, enjoy it 
all, from the hand-organ to the orchestra. 

The children of the stage, these citizens of 
the mimic world, are not the grasping, shrewd 
and prudent people of the mart. They are im- 
provident enough to enjoy the present and 
credulous enough to believe the promises of the 
universal liar known as Hope. Their hearts and 
hands are open. As a rule, genius is generous, 
luxurious, lavish, reckless and royal. And so, 
when they have reached the ladder's topmost 
round, they think the world is theirs and that the 
heaven of the future can have no cloud. But 
from the ranks of youth the rival steps. Upon 



88 



H&B Cije $f)Uogopf)|> of Sngerstoll ft&i 



the veteran brows the wreaths begin to fade, the 
leaves to fall, and failure sadly sups on memory. 
They tread the stage no more. They leave the 
mimic world, fair fancy's realm ; they leave their 
palaces and thrones; their crowns are gone, and 
from their hands the scepters fall. At last, in 
age and want, in lodgings small and bare, they 
wait the Prompter's call. 

Art has nothing to do directly with morality 
or immorality. It is its own excuse for being; 
it exists for itself. 

Art is not a sermon, and the artist is not a 
preacher. Art accomplishes by indirection. The 
beautiful refines. 

The drama is a crystallization of history, an 
epitome of the human heart. The past is lived 
again and again, and we see upon the stage, 
love, sacrifice, fidelity, courage — all the virtues 
mingled with all the follies. 

Great music is always sad, because it tells us 
of the perfect; and such is the difference be- 
tween what we are and that which music sug- 
gests — that even in the vase of joy we find some 
tears. 

Intelligence, imagination, presence; a mo- 
bile and impressive face ; a body that lends itself 
to every mood in appropriate pose — one that is 
oak or willow at will; self-possession; absolute 
ease; a voice capable of giving every shade of 
meaning and feeling ; an intuitive knowledge or 



89 



Art and 
Morality. 



Art and 

Morality. 



Address to the 
Actors 1 Fund 
of America. 



Seidl-Stanton 
Dinner. 



Plays and 
Players. 



HfiB Cije ^fitlogoptJP of Sngergoll B£9 



Morality. 



On Robert 
Burns. 



Plays and 
T layers. 



The Church 
and the Stage. 



perception of proportion; and, above all, the 
actor should be so sincere that he loses himself 
in the character he portrays. Such an actor will 
grow intellectually and morally. The great actor 
should strive to satisfy himself — to reach his 
own ideal. 

The artist who endeavors to enforce a les- 
son, becomes a preacher ; and the artist who tries 
by hint and suggestion to enforce the immoral, 
becomes a pander. 

Poetry cannot be written by rule; it is not 
a trade or a profession. Let the critics lay down 
the laws, and the true poet will violate them all. 

Nearly all the arts unite in the theater, and 
it is the result of the best, the highest, the most 
artistic, that man can do. 

Nothing is more natural than imitation. 
The little child with her doll, telling it stories, 
putting words in its mouth, attributing to it the 
feelings of happiness and misery, is the simple 
tendency toward the drama. Little children 
always have plays; they imitate their parents, 
they put on the clothes of their elders; they 
have imaginary parties, carry on conversation 
with imaginary persons, have little dishes filled 
with imaginary food, pour tea and coffee out of 
invisible pots, receive callers, and repeat what 
they have heard their mothers say. This is simply 
the natural drama, an exercise of the imagina- 
tion which always has been and which, probably, 
always will be, a source of great pleasure. In 



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the early days of the world nothing was more 
natural than for the people to reenact the history 
of their country — to represent the great heroes, 
the great battles, and the most exciting scenes 
the history of which has been preserved by 
legend. I believe this tendency to reenact, to 
bring before the eyes the great, the curious, the 
pathetic events of history, has been universal. 
All civilized nations have delighted in the thea- 
ter, and the greatest minds in many countries 
have been devoted to the drama, and, without 
doubt, the greatest man about whom we know 
anything devoted his life to the production of 
plays. 

The citizens of the real world gain joy 
and comfort from the stage. The broker, the 
speculator ruined by rumor, the lawyer baffled 
by the intelligence of the jury or the stupidity 
of a judge, the doctor who lost his patience be- 
cause he lost his patients, the merchant in the 
dark days of depression, and all the children of 
misfortune, the victims of hope deferred, forget 
their troubles for a little while when looking on 
the mimic world. When the shaft of wit flies 
like the arrow of Ulysses through all the rings 
and strikes the center; when words of wisdom 
mingle with the clown's conceits; when folly 
laughing shows her pearls, and mirth holds car- 
nival; when the villain fails and the right tri- 
umphs, the trials and the griefs of life for the 
moment fade away. 

And so the maiden longing to be loved, the 
young man waiting for the "Yes" deferred, 



91 



The Children 
of the Stage. 



The Children 
of the Stage. 



B&l ^fie $fnlos;opf)j> of SngerSoll H&B 



T^e Children 
of the Stage. 



the unloved wife, hear the old, old story told 
again, — and again within their hearts is the 
ecstasy of requited love. 

The stage brings solace to the wounded, 
peace to the troubled, and with the wizard's 
wand touches the tears of grief, and they are 
changed to the smiles of joy. 



92 



BAB Cfje $f)tlogopf)p of SngerSolI Mil 



CRIME 

There are men who pursue crime as a voca- 
tion — as a profession; men who have been con- 
victed again and again, and who will persist in 
using the liberty of intervals to prey upon the 
rights of others. What shall be done with these 
men and women? 

Put one thousand hardened thieves on an 
island, compel them to produce what they eat 
and use, and I am almost certain that a large 
majority would be opposed to theft. Those who 
worked would not permit those who did not, to 
steal the result of their labor. In other words, 
self-preservation would be the dominant idea, and 
these men would instantly look upon the idlers 
as the enemies of their society. 

Such a community would be self-supporting. 
Let women of the same class be put by them- 
selves. Keep the sexes absolutely apart. Those 
who are beyond the power of reformation should 
not have the liberty to reproduce themselves. 
Those who cannot be reached by kindness, by 
justice, those who under no circumstances are 
willing to do their share, should be separated. 
They should dwell apart, and, dying, should 
leave no heirs. 

If we are to change the conduct of men, we 
must change their conditions. Extreme poverty 
and crime go hand in hand. Destitution multi- 
plies temptations and destroys the finer feelings. 



Crimes Against 
Criminals. 



Crimes Against 
Criminals. 



Crimes Against 
Criminals. 



Crimes Against 
Criminals. 



93 



H&B ®%t $fnto$opf)p of HfogersioU B&B 



Crimes Against 
Criminals. 



Crimes Against 
Criminals. 



Crimes Against 
Criminals. 



Crimes Against 
Criminals. 



The bodies and souls of men are apt to be clad 
in like garments. If the body is covered with 
rags, the soul is generally in the same condition. 

As long as children are raised in the tene- 
ment and gutter, the prisons will be full. The 
gulf between the rich and poor will grow wider 
and wider. One will depend on cunning, the 
other on force. It is a great question whether 
those who live in luxury can afford to allow 
others to exist in want. The value of property 
depends not on the prosperity of the few, but 
on the prosperity of a very large majority. 

Socrates, in some respects at least, one of 
the wisest of men, said : " It is strange that you 
should not be angry when you meet a man with 
an ill-conditioned body, and yet be vexed when 
you encounter one with an ill-conditioned soul." 

We know that there are deformed bodies, 
and we are equally certain that there are de- 
formed minds. 

In civilized countries the struggle for exist- 
ence is severe — the competition far sharper than 
in savage lands. The consequence is that there 
are many failures. These failures lack, it may 
be opportunity, or brain, or moral force, or 
industry, or something without which, under the 
circumstances, success is impossible. Certain 
lines of conduct are called legal, and certain 
others criminal, and the men who fail in one 
line may be driven to the other. How do we 
know that it is possible for all people to be 



94 



ffifi Cfje ^tjtlosiopfjp of Sngergoil BSB 



honest? Are we certain that all people can tell 
the truth? Is it possible for all men to be gen- 
erous, or candid, or courageous? 

Ignorance, filth and poverty are the mis- 
sionaries of crime. As long as dishonorable suc- 
cess outranks honest effort, as long as society 
bows and cringes before the great thieves, there 
will be little ones enough to fill the jails. 

Is it not true that the criminal is a natural 
product, and that society unconsciously produces 
these children of vice? Can we not safely take 
another step, and say that the criminal is a vic- 
tim, as the diseased and insane and deformed are 
victims ? 

Most people defend capital punishment on 
the ground that the man ought to be killed be- 
cause he has killed another. The only real 
ground for killing him, even if that be good, is 
not that he has killed, but that he may kill. 
What he has done simply gives evidence of what 
he may do, and to prevent what he may do, 
instead of to revenge what he has done, should 
be the reason given. 

But I look forward to the time when men 
and women by reason of their knowledge of 
consequences, of the morality born of intelli- 
gence, will refuse to perpetuate disease and pain, 
will refuse to fill the world with failures. 

When that time comes the prison walls will 
fall, the dungeons will be flooded with light, and 



Crimes Against 
Criminals. 



Crimes Against 
Criminals. 



Society and Its 
Criminals. 



What Is 
Religion f 



What Is 
Religion ? 



95 



HAS ®ije ^fjtlosopf)? of ^ngersfoll H&H 



Capital Pun- 
ishment and the 
Whipping- 
Post. 



Capital Pun- 
ishment and the 
Whipping- 
Post. 



the shadow of the scaffold will cease to curse the 
earth. Poverty and crime will be childless. The 
withered hands of Want will not be stretched 
for alms. They will be dust. The whole world 
will be intelligent, virtuous and free. 

Society has a right to protect itself, but this 
can be done by imprisonment, and it is more 
humane to put a criminal in a cell than in a 
grave. Capital punishment degrades and hardens 
a community, and it is a work of savagery. 
Any punishment that degrades the punished, 
must necessarily degrade the one inflicting the 
punishment. No punishment should be inflicted 
by a human being that could not be inflicted by 
a gentleman. 

I think the refusal of the Governor to com- 
mute the sentence of Mrs. Place is a disgrace 
to the State. What a spectacle of man killing 
a woman — taking a poor, pallid, frightened 
woman, strapping her to a chair and then ar- 
ranging the apparatus so she can be shocked to 
death ! 



96 



E&B Cfje ^ilomW of Sngergoll B&B 



WAR 

The past arises before me like a dream. 
Again we are in the great struggle for national 
life. We hear the sounds of preparation — the 
music of boisterous drums, the silver voices of 
heroic bugles. We see thousands of assemblages, 
and hear the appeals of orators. We see the pale 
cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men, 
and in those assemblages we see all the dead 
whose dust we have covered with flowers. We 
lose sight of them no more. We are with them 
when they enlist in the great army of freedom. 
We see them apart with those they love. Some 
are walking for the last time in quiet, woody 
places, with the maidens they adore. We hear 
the whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal 
love as they lingeringly part forever. Others are 
bending over cradles, kissing babes that are 
asleep. Some are receiving the blessing of old 
men. Some are parting with mothers who hold 
them and press them to their hearts again and 
again, and say nothing. And some are talking 
with wives, and endeavoring with brave words, 
spoken in the old tones, to drive from their 
hearts the awful fear. We see them part. We 
see the wife standing in the door with the babe 
in her arms, standing in the sunlight sobbing. 
At the turn of the road a hand waves; she 
answers by holding high in her loving arms the 
child. He is gone, and forever. 

We see them all as they march proudly away 
under the flaunting flags, keeping time to the 



97 



Indianapolis 
Speech. 



Indianapolis 
Speech. 



H&B Cfje ^fjtlossopfjp of Sngersoll B£B 



Indianapolis 
Speech. 



Indianapolis 
Speech. 



Indianapolis 
Speech. 



Indianapolis 
Speech. 



grand wild music of war, marching down the 
streets of the great cities, through the towns and 
across the prairies, down to the fields of glory, 
to do and to die for the eternal right. 

We go with them, one and all. We are by 
their side on all the gory fields, in all the hospi- 
tals of pain, on all the weary marches. We stand 
guard with them in the wild storm and under 
the quiet stars. We are with them in ravines 
running with blood, in the furrows of old fields. 
We are with them between contending hosts, 
unable to move, wild with thirst, the life ebbing 
slowly away among the withered leaves. We see 
them pierced with balls and torn with shells, in 
the trenches, by forts, and in the whirlwind of 
the charge, where men become iron, with nerves 
of steel. 

We are with them in the prisons of hatred 
and famine; but human speech can never tell 
what they endured. 

We are at home when the news comes that 
they are dead. We see the maiden in the shadow 
of her first sorrow. We see the silvered head of 
the old man bowed with the last grief. 

The past rises before us, and we see four 
millions of human beings governed by the lash ; 
we see them bound hand and foot ; we hear the 
strokes of cruel whips ; we see the hounds track- 
ing women through tangled swamps. We see 
babes sold from the breasts of mothers. Cruelty 
unspeakable! Outrage infinite! 



98 



B&B Cfje ^fniosopf)? of Sngersoll B&B 



Four million bodies in chains — four million 
souls in fetters. All the sacred relations of wife, 
mother, father and child trampled beneath the 
brutal feet of Might! And all this was done 
under our own beautiful banner of the free. 

The past rises before us. We hear the roar 
and shriek of the bursting shell. The broken 
fetters fall. These heroes died. We look. In- 
stead of slaves we see men and women and chil- 
dren. The wand of progress touches the auc- 
tion-block, the slave-pen, the whipping-post, and 
we see homes and firesides, and schoolhouses 
and books, and where all was want and crime 
and cruelty and fear, we see the faces of the 
free. 

These heroes are dead. They died for lib- 
erty — they died for us. They are at rest. 
They sleep in the land they made free, under 
the flag they rendered stainless, under the 
solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful wil- 
lows, and the embracing vines. They sleep be- 
neath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike 
of sunshine or of storm, each in the windowless 
place of Rest. Earth may run red with other 
wars — they are at peace. In the midst of bat- 
tle, in the roar of conflict, they found the 
serenity of death. I have one sentiment for sol- 
diers living and dead: cheers for the living, 
tears for the dead. 

To me it seems infinitely cruel for life to feed 
on life — to create animals that devour others. 
The teeth and beaks, the claws and fangs, that 



Indianapolis 
Speed. 



Indianapolis 
Speech. 



Why I Am 

an Agnostic. 



99 



tear and rend, fill me with horror. What can 
be more frightful than a world at war? Every 
leaf a battle-field, every flower a Golgotha, in 
every drop of water pursuit, capture and death. 
Under every piece of bark, life lying in wait for 
life: on every blade of grass, something that 
kills, something that suffers. Everywhere the 
strong living on the weak — the superior on the 
inferior. Everywhere the weak, the insignifi- 
cant, living on the strong — the inferior on the 
superior : the highest, food for the lowest : man 
sacrificed for the sake of microbes. Murder 
universal. Everywhere pain, disease and death — 
death that does not wait for bent forms and gray 
hairs, but clutches babes and happy youths — 
death that takes the mother from her helpless, 
dimpled child — death that fills the world with 
grief and tears. 

Grant The soldiers were saviors of the nation; 

Banquet. * 

they were the liberators of man. In writing 
the Proclamation of Emancipation, Lincoln, 
greatest of our mighty dead, whose memory is 
as gentle as the summer air when the reapers 
sing amid the gathered sheaves, copied with the 
pen what Grant and his brave comrades wrote 
with sword. 

Gram Grander than the Greek, nobler than the 

Banquet. * 

Roman, the soldiers of the Republic, with pa- 
triotism as shoreless as the air, battled for 
the rights of others, for the nobility of labor; 
fought that mothers might own their own 
babes, that arrogant Idleness should not scar 
the back of patient Toil, and that our country 



oo 



H&B Cfje ^fuiostopljp of aJngersoll H&H 



should not be a many-headed monster made of 
warring States, but a nation, sovereign, great 
and free. 

Blood was water, money was leaves, and life 
was only common air until one flag floated 
over a republic without a master and without a 
slave. 



Grant 
Banquet. 



10: 



B&M %\>t ^fjilosiojpfjp ot Sttgersoll HfiB 



Spiritualism. 



Spiritualism. 



Spiritualism. 



SPIRITUALISM 

There are several good things about the 
Spiritualists. First, they are not bigoted ; second, 
they do not believe in salvation of faith; third, 
they don't expect to be happy in another world 
because Christ was good in this ; fourth, they do 
not preach the consolation of hell; fifth, they 
do not believe in God as an infinite monster; 
sixth, the Spiritualists believe in intellectual hos- 
pitality. In these respects they differ from our 
Christian brethren, and in these respects they are 
far superior to the saints. 

I think that the Spiritualists have done good. 
They believe in enjoying themselves — in having 
a little pleasure in this world. They are social, 
cheerful and good-natured. They are not the 
slaves of a book. Their hands and feet are not 
tied with passages of Scripture. They are not 
troubling themselves about getting forgiveness 
and settling their heavenly debts for a cent on 
the dollar. Their belief does not make them 
mean or miserable. 

They do not persecute their neighbors. They 
ask no one to have faith or to believe without 
evidence. They ask all to investigate, and then 
to make up their minds from the evidence. 
Hundreds of thousands of well-educated, intelli- 
gent people are satisfied with the evidence, and 
firmly believe in the existence of spirits. For all 
I know, they may be right. 



B&H Cfje ^tjtios!03pf)P ot Sngersoli H&B 



OPTIMISM 

A vision of the future rises: 

I see our country filled with happy homes, 
with firesides of content, — the foremost land 
of all the earth. 

I see a world where thrones have crumbled 
and where kings are dust. The aristocracy of 
idleness has perished from the earth. 

I see a world without a slave. Man at last 
is free. Nature's forces have by Science been 
enslaved. Lightning and light, wind and wave, 
frost and flame, and all the secret, subtle powers 
of earth and air are the tireless toilers for the 
human race. 

I see a world at peace, adorned with every 
form of art, with music's myriad voices thrilled, 
while lips are rich with words of love and truth ; 
a world in which no exile sighs, no prisoner 
mourns; a world on which the gibbet's shadow 
does not fall; a world where labor reaps its 
full reward ; where work and worth go hand in 
hand; where the poor girl trying to win bread 
with the needle — the needle that has been 
called "the asp for the breast of the poor" — is 
not driven to the desperate choice of crime or 
death, of suicide or shame. 

I see a world without the beggar's out- 
stretched palm, the miser's heartless, stony stare, 
the piteous wail of Want, the livid lips of Lies, 
the cruel eyes of Scorn. 

I see a race without disease of flesh or brain, 
shapely and fair, the married harmony of form 
and function, — and as I look, life lengthens, 



103 



Declaration 
Day Oration. 



HfiB ®[)e ^i)tiogopfjj> of 3ngergoll HfiB 



T^f Ge<&. 



Dinner, 



Lotus Club 
Dinner, 



joy deepens, love canopies the earth, and over 
all, in the great dome, shines the eternal star of 
human hope. 

While utterly discarding all creeds, and deny- 
ing the infallibility of all religions, there is 
neither in my heart nor upon my lips a sneer for 
the hopeful, loving and tender souls who believe 
that from all this discord will result a perfect 
harmony ; that every evil will in some mysterious 
way become a good, and that above and over all 
there is a being who, in some way, will reclaim 
and glorify every one of the children of men. 

The highest possible philosophy is to enjoy 
today, not regretting yesterday, and not fearing 
tomorrow. Let us suck the orange of life dry, 
so that when Death does come, we can politely 
say to him : " You are welcome to the peelings. 
What little there was we have enjoyed. " 

But there is one splendid thing about the 
play called life. Suppose that when you die, 
that is the end. The last thing that you know 
is that you are alive, and the last thing that will 
happen to you is the curtain, not falling, but the 
curtain rising on another thought, so that as far 
as your consciousness is concerned you will and 
must live forever. No man can remember when 
he began, and no man can remember when he 
ends. As far as we are concerned we live both 
eternities, the one past and the one to come, and 
it is a delight to me to feel satisfied, and to feel 
in my own heart that I can never be certain that 
I have seen the faces I love for the last time. 



04 



BM Wbt ^fjilosiopf)j» of SngergoU E&E 



IMMORTALITY 

My opinion of immortality is this: 
First, I live, and that of itself is infinitely 
wonderful. Second, there was a time when I 
was not, and after I was not, I was. Third, now 
that I am, I may be again; and it is no more 
wonderful that I may be again, if I have been, 
than that I am, having once been nothing. 

Neither the Bible nor the Church gave us 
the idea of immortality. 

If we are immortal it is a fact in nature, and 
that fact does not depend on Bibles, on priests 
or creeds. 

The hope of another life was in the heart, 
long before the "sacred books" were written, 
and will remain there long after all the "sacred 
books" are known to be the work of savage and 
superstitious men. 

Is death the end? Over the grave bends 
Love sobbing, and by her side stands Hope, and 
whispers : " We shall meet again. Before all life 
is death, and after all death is life. The falling 
leaf, touched with the hectic flush, that testifies 
of autumn's death, is, in a subtler sense, a proph- 
ecy of spring." 

If, when the grave bursts, I am not to meet 
the faces that have been my sunshine in this 
life, let me sleep. 



Miracles and 
Immortality . 



Orthodoxy. 



The 

Foundations 
of Faith. 



The 

Foundations 
of Faith. 



Liberty and 
Literature. 



Orthodoxy. 



I0 5 



EM W$t ^fjtiosiojp})? oC Sngersioll HfiH 



Orthodoxy. 



The Ghosts. 



Orthodoxy. 



Funeral of 

J. G. Mills, 

and 

Immortality. 



From the affection of the human heart grew 
the great oak of the hope of immortality. 

The idea of immortality, that like a sea has 
ebbed and flowed in the human heart, with its 
countless waves of hope and fear, beating against 
the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not 
born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any 
religion. It was born of human affection, and 
it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the 
mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long 
as Love kisses the lips of Death. It is the rain- 
bow — Hope shining upon the tears of Grief. 

We do not know, we cannot say, whether 
death is a wall or a door; the beginning or the 
end of a day; the spreading of pinions to soar, 
or the folding forever of wings; the rise or the 
set of a sun, or an endless life that brings rap- 
ture and love to every one. 

I have never denied the immortality of the 
soul. I have simply been honest. I have said, 
"I do not know." 



:o6 



1&I W$t ^fjtlosfopfip of inptsoli B&B 



TRIBUTES 

Dear Friends : I am going to do that which 
the dead oft promised he would do for me. 

The loved and loving brother, husband, 
father, friend, died where manhood's morning 
almost touches noon, and while the shadows 
still were falling toward the west. 

He had not passed on life's highway the stone 
that marks the highest point; but being weary 
for a moment, he lay down by the wayside, and 
using his burden for a pillow, fell into that 
dreamless sleep that kisses down his eyelids still. 
While yet in love with life and raptured with 
the world, he passed to silence and pathetic dust. 

Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the hap- 
piest, sunniest hour of all the voyage, while 
eager winds are kissing every sail, to dash against 
the unseen rock, and in an instant hear the bil- 
lows roar above a sunken ship. For whether in 
mid-sea or 'mong the breakers of the farther 
shore, a wreck at last must mark the end of each 
and all. And every life, no matter if its every 
hour is rich with love and every moment jeweled 
with a joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy 
as sad and deep and dark as can be woven of 
the warp and woof of mystery and death. 

This brave and tender man in every storm of 
life was oak and rock; but in the sunshine he 
was vine and flower. He was the friend of all 
heroic souls. He climbed the heights, and left 
all superstitions far below, while on his forehead 
fell the golden dawning of a grander day. 

He loved the beautiful, and was with color, 



107 



A Tribute 
to Ebon C. 
Ingersoll. 



MM tTfje ^fjtlosoptjp of Sngersoii H&B 



Shakespeare, 



form and music touched with tears. He sided 
with the weak, the poor, and wronged, and lov- 
ingly gave alms. With loyal heart and with the 
purest hands he faithfully discharged all public 
trusts. 

Life is a narrow vale between the cold and 
barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in 
vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, 
and the only answer is the echo of our wailing 
cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying 
dead there comes no word ; but in the night of 
death Hope sees a star, and listening Love can 
hear the rustle of a wing. 

He who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking 
the approach of death for the return of health, 
whispered with his latest breath, " I am better 
now. 5 ' Let us believe, in spite of doubts and 
dogmas, of fears and tears, that these dear words 
are true of all the countless dead. 

The record of a generous life runs like a vine 
around the memory of our dead, and every 
sweet, unselfish act is now a perfumed flower. 

Speech cannot contain our love. There was, 
there is, no gentler, stronger, manlier man. 

If Shakespeare knew one fact, he knew its 
kindred and its neighbors. Looking at a coat of 
mail, he instantly imagined the society, the con- 
ditions, that produced it and what it, in turn, 
produced. He saw the castle, the moat, the 
drawbridge, the lady in the tower, and the 
knightly lover spurring across the plain. He saw 
the bold baron and the rude retainer, the 
trampled serf, and all the glory and the grief of 
feudal life. 



108 



H&B Wyt ^fjilosiopf)? of ^ngersoll Mil 



He lived the life of all. 

He was a citizen of Athens in the days of 
Pericles. He listened to the eager eloquence 
of the great orators, and sat upon the cliffs, and 
with the tragic poet heard "the multitudinous 
laughter of the sea." He saw Socrates thrust 
the spear of question through the shield and 
heart of Falsehood. He was present when the 
great man drank hemlock, and met the night of 
death, tranquil as a star meets morning. He 
listened to the peripatetic philosophers, and was 
unpuzzled by the sophists. He watched Phidias 
as he chiseled shapeless stone to forms of love 
and awe. 

He lived by the mysterious Nile, amid the 
vast and monstrous. He knew the very thought 
that wrought the form and features of the 
sphinx. He heard great Memnon's morning 
song when marble lips were smitten by the sun. 
He laid him down with the embalmed and 
waiting dead, and felt within their dust the 
expectation of another life, mingled with cold 
and suffocating doubts — the children born of 
long delay. 

He walked the ways of mighty Rome, and 
saw great Caesar with his legions in the field. 
He stood with vast and motley throngs and 
watched the triumphs given to victorious men, 
followed by uncrowned kings, the captured 
hosts, and all the spoils of ruthless war. He 
heard the shout that shook the Coliseum's roof- 
less walls, when from the reeling gladiator's hand 
the short sword fell, while from his bosom 
gushed the stream of wasted life. 

He lived the life of savage men. He trod the 



109 



On 
Shakespeare. 



On 

Shakespeare. 



forests' silent depths, and in the desperate game 
of life or death he matched his thought against 
the instinct of the beast. 

He knew all crimes and all regrets, all virtues 
and their rich rewards. He was victim and vic- 
tor, pursuer and pursued, outcast and king. He 
heard the applause and curses of the world, and 
on his heart had fallen all the nights and noons 
of failure and success. 

He knew the unspoken thoughts, the dumb 
desires, the wants and ways of beasts. He felt 
the crouching tiger's thrill, the terror of the 
ambushed prey, and with the eagles he had 
shared the ecstasy of flight and poise and swoop, 
and he had lain with sluggish serpents on the 
barren rocks uncoiling slowly in the heat of 
noon. 

He sat beneath the bo-tree's contemplative 
shade, wrapped in Buddha's mighty thought, 
and dreamed all dreams that Light, the alche- 
mist, has wrought from dust and dew, and stored 
within the slumbrous poppy's subtle blood. 

He knelt with awe and dread at every shrine; 
he offered every sacrifice and every prayer; felt 
the consolation and the shuddering fear ; mocked 
and worshiped all the gods; enjoyed all heavens, 
and felt the pangs of every hell. 

He lived all lives, and through his blood and 
brain there crept the shadow and the chill of 
every death, and the soul, like Mazeppa, was 

lashed naked to the wild horse of everv fear and 

j 

love and hate. 

The imagination had a stage in Shakespeare's 
brain, whereon were set all scenes that lie 
between the morn of laughter and the night of 



BAB ttye Pjtlogopf^ of Ittgergoil BAB 



tears, and where his prayers bodied forth the 
false and true, the joys and griefs, the careless 
shallows and the tragic deeps of universal life. 

From Shakespeare's brain there poured a 
Niagara of gems spanned by Fancy's seven-hued 
arch. He was as many-sided as clouds are many- 
formed. To him giving was hoarding, sowing 
was harvest, and waste itself the source of 
wealth. Within his marvelous mind were the 
fruits of all thought past, the seeds of all to be. 
As a drop of dew contains the image of the 
earth and sky, so all there is of life was mirrored 
forth in Shakespeare's brain. 

Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose 
waves touched all the shores of thought ; within 
which were all the tides and waves of destiny 
and will; over which swept all the storms of 
fate, ambition and revenge ; upon which fell the 
gloom and darkness of despair and death and all 
the sunlight of content and love, and within 
which was the inverted sky lit with the eternal 
stars — an intellectual ocean, towards which all 
rivers ran, and from which now the isles and 
continents of thought receive their dew and rain. 



On 

Shakespeare. 



I I I 



H&B Wqt ^f)tiosiop|ij) of Sngersoll HfiB 


INDEX 


Actions, consequences of, 29 ; 


Cazenovia, town of, 4. 


quality of, 3 1 ; the fruit of cir- 


Caesar, 109. 


cumstances, 30. 


Century, eighteenth, 83. 


Actors, qualification of, 89. 


Character, 61 ; good not made in 


Affection, of man for woman, 41. 


a day, 14. 


Ambition, the grandest, 36, 25. 


Chemistry, 34. 


America, 51. 


Children, 54 ; rights of, 54 ; 


Americans, purchase from, 2. 


government of, 54. 


Anarchy, 72. 


Childhood, hospitality of, 2. 


Anger, blows out lamp of the 


Chinese, the, 22. 


mind, 1. 


Christmas, 21. 


Anthony, Miss Susan B., 41. 


Christ, 40. 


Archbishops, 21. 


Circumstances, 30. 


Arachne's dream, 84. 


Civilization, corner-stones of, 52; 


Aristotle, 83. 


foundations of, 50 ; highest 


Art, 34. 


test of, 55; fortress of, 36. 


Artist, as preacher, 90. 


Clergymen, 21. 


Athens, citizens of, 109. 


Clergy, the, 3. 


Atheist, 55. 


Colleges, 60. 




Colored people, equality of, 1 7. 


Babes, 24, 25. 


Congress, of the United States, 


Beauty, vine of, 66. 


74-. 


Being, an infinite, 81. 


Conscience, 12. 


Belief, not a voluntary thing, 8. 


Convicts, 61. 


Bishops, 21. 


Comedy, 36. 


Blasphemers, 76. 


Communism, 72. 


Books, what to read, 7. 


Crompton, 83. 


Boycotting, 79. 


Comte, Auguste, 83. 


Buchner's "Force and Matter,' , 7. 


Cordelia, 3 8. 


Buckle, 83 ; "History of Civili- 


Creator, the, 26. 


zation in England," 7. 


Crime, in relation to marriage, 


Burns, Robert, 7. 


43 ; missionaries of, 95. 




Criminal, the, 95. 


Candor, courage of the soul, 1 . 


Custom, beginning of, 8. 


Capitalist, 77. 




Capital, its vigor to combine, 3. 


Darwin, Charles, 81. 


Cardinals, 21. 


Deity, pretended, 33. 


Catapult, 84. 


Desdemona, 3^. 

1 



113 



Mil tKfje ^f)tlo£Sopf)j> of Snger^oil E&E 


Descartes, 83. 


History, study of, 58. 


D'Holbach's "System of 


Home, 24, 37 ; democracy of, 


Nature," 7. 


53 ; where virtue dwells, 5 1 ; 


Dickens, Charles, 7. 


the unit of civilization, 51. 


Divorce, 43 ; real, 43 . 


Homestead, exemption of, 52. 


Drama, the, 89. 


Honor, 25. 


Draper, " Intellectual Develop- 


Hope, 23, 24; star of, 108. 


ment of Europe," 7. 


Hugo, Victor, 7. 


" Dutchman, Flying," the, 87. 




Duty, 40. 


Idleness, not respectable, 78 ; 




aristocracy of, 103. 


Eden, 63. 


Ignorance, the only slavery, 4. 


Education, 58 ; objects of, 59. 


Independence, Declaration of, 71 . 


Experience, 31. 


Industry, 79. 


Equality, $3. 


Ingersoll, Ebon C, tribute to, 


Evil, forces of, 41. 


107. 




Infidel, 55. 


Faith, 63. 


Intelligence, 63 ; as lever of 


Family, head of, 45 ; ideal of, 


mankind, 34. 


44 ; relation of, 51; republic- 


Inventors, 42 ; respect for, 42. 


anism of, $3 ; treatment of, 47. 


Imitators, 90. 


Fiction, readers of, 38. 


Imitation, 90. 


Fortune, 64 ; owns the man, 64. 


Immortality, idea of, 106; 


Franklin, Ben., 71. 


opinion of, 105 ; man is, 104; 


Fraternity, 75. 


hope of, 106. 


Fulton, Robert, 83. 


Imogene,39. 




Isabella, 38. 


Ganges, the, 33. 


Idle, disgraceful to be, 2. 


Genius, and labor, 79. 


Jacquard, 84. 


God, when I speak of, 18. 


Jefferson, Thomas, 71. 


Government, 3. 


Judges, backs to the dawn, 13. 


Grandchildren, laughter of, 49. 


Juliet, 38. 


Gravitation, attraction of, 41. 


Justice, 67 ; gospel of, 67 ; sword 




of, 68 ; blind but not heartless, 


Habeas Corpus, 2. 


68. 


Happiness, the only good, 18. 




Happy, to be, 45. 


Kepler, 83. 


Hermione, 39. 


Kindergarten, 58 ; system of, 58. 


Heroes, death of, 99. 


Kings, 58._ 


Heroines, 3 8 ; Shakesoeare's, 39. 


Kindness, is struggle, 1 ; evidence 


Hieroglyphics, 84. 


of greatness, 16. 



114 



H&H &fje ^fnlosopfjp of Sngersoll H&B 


Land, ownership of, 79. 


Matter, 6 2 ; not created, 23- 


Laughter, Daughter of Joy, 1. 


Mistakes, all have to be paid for, 


Labor, 77 ; as basis of happiness, 


3i- 


66 ; Knights of, 78 ; products 


Miracle, 29. 


of, 77. 


Miracles, true, 81. 


Laborer, the, 66. 


Miranda, 39. 


Language, a growth, 19 ; 


Moloch, 37. 


music the highest, 88. 


Montaigne, 83. 


Lash, government of, 54. 


Mirth, medicine of, 1 . 


Law, man and woman not 


Morality, definition of, 19. 


virtuous by, 50. 


Morse, 83. 


Lawyer, duty of, 9. 


Music, kinds of, 87, 98 ; the 


Lecky's "History of European 


Shakespeare of, 87. 


Morals," 7. 




Legislature, the, 84. 


Nations, 18. 


Liberty, 53 ; intellectual, 73 ; 


Nature, 3 2 ; a series of causes, 


physical, flag of, 75. 


32 ; consequences of, 33; forces 


Life, 24; winding road, 26; the 


of, 35; good, 48; interpreter 


battle of, common facts of, 


of, 33 ; laws of, 33 ; trademark 


origin of, sea of, 27; Tree of, 


of, 34; passions and intentions 


28 ; true end and aim of, 18 ; 


of, 32. 


feeding on life, 99 ; enjoyment 


Newspaper, articles in, 17. 


of, 104; the play called life, 


Nihilist, 64. 


104; a narrow vale, 108. 




Literature, of the world, 3 8 ; 


Old, death of, 4. 


influence of woman upon, 38. 


Opinion, public, defined, 6. 


Louvre, painting in, 40. 


Optimisms, 103. 


Love, 24, 48 ; self-love, 48, 49 ; 


Orator, how to be an, 13. 


denial of, 87 ; is of no country, 




49- 


Paine, Thomas, " Age of 




Reason," 7. 


Magdalene, Mary, 40. 


Passions, human, 43. 


Magic, 29. 


Patriots, 52. 


Man, an educated, 60 ; influences 


Patriotism, 16. 


ofthesoulof,34; isstrength,49. 


People, working, 80. 


Marriage, 25, 36, 43 ; belief in, 


Phidias, 109. 


44 ; ceremony of, 44 ; in 


Philosophy, the highest, 104. 


relation to God, Church and 


Philosophers, peripatetic, 109. 


State, 44 ; most important 


Phonograph, the, 84. 


contract, 43 ; real, 43, 44; 


Poet, songs of, 77. 


rise of condition to, 44. 


Poetry, laws of, 90. 



115 



H&B Ufa Ifnlosopt^ of SngersioU B&B 


Politics, general principles of, 39 ; 


Sex, 35. 


influence of women in, 40 ; 


Shakespeare, William, 108; an 


of a country, 39. 


intellectual ocean, 1 1 1 . 


Politicians, changed to 


Shakespeare, the music of, 87. 


statesmen, 7. 


Shelley, P. B., 7. 


Prayers, 29. 


Siegfried, funeral march of, 87. 


Prejudice, 69. 


Sinai, 71. 


Press, untrammelled, 72. 


Slaves, freedom of, 74. 


Pericles, days of, 109. 


Sleep, best medicine, 5. 


Priests, the real, 21, 33. 


Society, right to protect itself, 


Progress, 74. 


9 6. 


Prohibition, abolished, 17. 


Socialist, 72. 


Prosperity, of the world, 77. 


Socrates, 94. 


Punishment, corporal, 21 ; 


Soldiers, sentiment for, 99 ; 


degradation of, 96. 


saviors of our nation, 100. 




Soul, immortality of, 106; legal 


Reason, 19. 


tender of, 5. 


Republic, dangers of the, 6 1 ; 


Speech, free, 72. 


soldiers of the, 100. 


Spencer, Herbert, 83. 


Rich, the : how to judge 


Sphinx, features of, 109. 


them, 10. 


Spirit, 63. 


Right, what is, 16. 


Spiritualism, 102. 


Rights, equal, for women, 36, 


Spiritualists, good of, 102; 


37- 


lesson of, 86. 


Rocks, records of, 81. 


Stage, the, 86 ; solace of, 92 ; 


Rome, 109. 


the children of, 86, 88. 


Romeo and Juliet, 87. 


Stephenson, 83. 




Stock Exchange, 22. 


Salt, overturning the, 19. 


Strikes, 79. 


Savage, the, 60. 


Success, no, without love, 48. 


School, common, 60. 


Suffrage, for women, 36. 


Schools, manual training, 58. 


Superstition, 19. 


Schoolhouses, 61. 


Sympathy, 68 ; the mother of 


Scholars, 61. 


justice, 68. 


Science, glory of, 81 ; Holy 




Trinity of, 83 ; truths of, 8 1 ; 


Teachers, poor pay of, 61. 


as saviors of mankind, 81, 82. 


Telescope, 82, 84. 


Scientists, Catholic, 83. 


Tenements and flats, 2. 


Sea, the intellectual, 63. 


Theatre, the, 90 ; all acts unite 


Selfishness, 12. 


in, 90. 


Sentence, my last, 18. 


Thought, origin of, 10. 



16 



EM W*t ^fjtiogopi)? of Sngersoli EM 



Tragedy, 36. 

Tributes, 107. 

Tristan and Isolde, love music 

in, 87. 
Truth, 65 ; demonstrated, 66; 

immortal, 66 ; oak of, 66. 
Talent, seasons of, 3. 

Ulysses, 91. 
Universe, the, ^3- 
University, graduates of, 60. 

Vice, commencement of, 50 ; 

lives before love is born, 1. 
Voltaire, 71 ; " Philosophical 

Dictionary," 7. 
Virtue, 49 ; good nature is a, 1, 
Virtues, public and private, 51. 
Vivisection, curse of, 5. 



Wait's, " Liberty of Christian 

Religion," 7. 
Wagner, Richard, the 

Shakespeare of music, 87. 
War, 97; a world at, 100. 
Watt, 83. 

Wealth, enemy of genius, 6. 
Whisky, demoralizing, effect 

of, 11. 
Wife, the unfaithful, 43 ; 

treatment of, 5. 
Work, is worship, 76. 
Woman, cares of, 46 ; equal of 

man, 37 ; is beauty, 49 ; 

privileges of, 3 7 ; woman's 

right to vote, 3 7 ; slave 

virtues of, 39 ; as a teacher, 40. 
Words, death of, 13. 
Worship, 41. 
Worshiper, 41. 



117 



Here Ends Wt)t $M)ilOSOpf)P Of iltgergoll 

Edited & Arranged by Vere Goldthwaite 
The Typography of the Text and Cover executed 
by Harry Nash. Published by Paul Elder 
& Company and Printed for them at The 
Tomoye Press, City of New York, MCMVI. 


















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